I found a fabulous interactive website that lets students explore our solar system to get a much clearer understanding about planet orbits, size, and relative position to one another.
The site is simply called Planets and it's a fantastic resource for the SMART Board interactive whiteboard.
The site allows the teacher or student to control how they are viewing the solar system. Users can touch and drag to move things around and they have a complete set of controls to change scale, speed of orbits (passing of time), or planetary object to follow. For example, if you follow the Sun, the Sun is stationary and it shows the other planets orbiting the Sun. If you follow the Earth, then it shows the other planetary objects with a stationary Earth.
For you Pluto lovers, this resource shows Pluto as being the farthest "planet" away from the Sun. :o)
I hope you enjoy this incredible resource for the SMART Board. Please share it with your fellow teachers.
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