We have been learning about the Solar System and since the boys love to cook, I thought it would be fun for them to help make some a sugar cookie solar system. Our solar system is full of planets, the sun, moons, comets and stars as well as a long list of other things. This is a fun way to learn the order of the eight planets in our solar system.
First we made the sugar cookies and when they were cool, we iced them. I used a cookie cutter to cut out the direct circle shapes. We made eight different coloured icing colours, mixing these to get the colours we wanted. The eight colours we used were: grey, black, red, yellow, orange, blue, white and green.
Here is a list of how we mixed the colours for the icing for each of our planets:
- Mercury – grey, yellow and orange
- Venus – yellow and orange
- Earth – green and blue
- Mars – red
- Jupiter – yellow, orange and white
- Saturn – yellow, orange and red for the rings
- Uranus – blue and green and then blue for the rings
- Neptune – blue
We used yellow and orange for the sun and grey for the moon.
We also added a little bit of this Twinkle Shining Powder to all our cookies, to give them a little shine!
Here is a closer looks at the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Moon and Mars
And of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
You could also make moons for each of the other planets, though some of them have a lot, which is why we only made the moon for planet Earth.
Other Space and Solar System ideas
- Phases of the Moon Flip Book
- Galaxy Shirt
- Swirly-Whirly Planets
- Watercolour Solar System
- Space Cards
- Space Activity Pack
- Space Explorers Activities
- Solar Eclipse Printables
- Phases of the Moon Activities
- Printable Constellation Book
- Constellation Cards
Sugar Cookie Recipe
Simple Living. Creative LearningIngredients
- 1 cup butter softened
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 egg
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 3 cups plain flour
Instructions
- 1. Preheat oven to 175˚C
- 2. Cream butter and sugar until smooth
- 3. Add essence and egg and beat well
- 4. Combine the baking powder and flour in a separate bowl, slowly add the wet ingredients and mix well. If it gets too stiff, turn out onto countertop surface and finish kneading with wet hands.
- 5. Divide the dough into workable batches and roll out on a floured surface.
- 6. Cut into shapes.
- 7. Bake for 6-10 minutes and let cool a little on tray before transferring to a cooling rack.
Notes
We played a fun game with these Sugar Cookies Solar System cookies too. We made multiple cookies of each planet, sun and moon. The boys would choose one cookie and before they ate it, they would recite one fact about the planet, sun or moon cookie they were holding. If they didn’t know any facts, they would do some quick research before taking a cookie.
Ann
How did you cut the planet shapes? Cookie cutters? Thanks…these are super cute!
Stacey
Hi! I used cookie cutters for the shapes. For the planets with the rings around them, I used the cookie cutters to make in imprint into the dough and then used a knife to cut out the shape and ring.