Mercury Activities for Kids: Our Preschool Homeschool Space Unit
After spending our first week learning all about the Sun, we officially moved on to the first planet in our solar system: Mercury!
Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, and even though it is the smallest planet in our solar system, we somehow managed to turn it into an entire week of preschool homeschool activities.
One thing I have really loved about doing a space unit with my kids is finding ways to take what we're learning and turn it into something they can actually see, touch, create or even eat. Mercury was perfect for that because of its rocky, crater-covered surface.
Here's everything we did during our Mercury week.
Download our weekly schedule here!
Our Mercury Morning Menu Activities
We start most of our homeschool mornings with our Morning Menus. Some of the pages stay the same throughout our unit, while I switch out other activities based on what we're currently learning.
For Mercury week, I added a few Mercury and solar system worksheets to reinforce what we were learning.
Mercury Coloring Sheet
We used a simple Mercury coloring page as one of our activities. Coloring is obviously fun, but at these ages I also love it for the fine motor practice and pencil control.
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Mercury Coloring Worksheet
Mercury Read Along
We also used a Mercury reading activity to learn more about the planet. I like adding these into our space unit because it gives us a chance to sit down together, read about the planet and then talk about what we learned.
At their ages, I am much more interested in whether they can listen, understand and talk about the information than having them memorize a bunch of facts.
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Mercury Article & Questions
Solar System Printable
We're also using this solar system printable throughout our space unit.
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Solar System Printable
Puffy Paint Mercury Craft
One of my favorite activities this week was our puffy paint Mercury.
We are creating a paper plate solar system as we work our way through the planets, so for Mercury I wanted to give the planet some texture instead of simply painting a flat gray paper plate.
Puffy paint was perfect.
The texture helped us recreate our own version of Mercury's rocky, cratered surface. Once it dried, it had so much more dimension than regular paint.
This was also a fun sensory art activity and gave us another opportunity to talk about why Mercury's surface has so many craters.
Meteor Crater Experiment
This might have been the winner of Mercury week, especially for my oldest.
We filled a container with flour to represent the surface of Mercury and dropped different objects into it to see what happened when they hit the "surface."
Each impact created a crater.
We experimented with different objects and drops and talked about how Mercury's craters were created by objects such as asteroids and comets crashing into its surface.
It was messy, simple and VERY effective.
My oldest was completely invested in this one, and I have a feeling the crater experiment is going to be one of those activities he actually remembers from our space unit.
Color, Cut and Build Mercury
I also wanted to work some of our regular preschool and kindergarten skills into the planet activities.
For this one, the kids colored Mercury and then cut the planet apart along dotted lines.
Once all of the pieces were separated, they had to figure out how to put Mercury back together and glue the pieces onto a paper plate.
It turned a simple planet coloring page into a combination of:
Coloring
Scissor practice
Fine motor work
Visual problem solving
Gluing
Following directions
My youngest still needs some help with cutting, while my oldest is becoming much more independent with scissors, so I can easily adapt activities like this for both of them.
Mini Edible Mercurys
Of course, we had to make Mercury into food too.
We made mini edible Mercurys using rice cakes, peanut butter and different toppings to create the craters.
This was a really easy way to bring our lesson into snack time, and the kids could create their own version of Mercury's cratered surface before eating it.
I love activities like this because they don't have to be complicated to reinforce what we're learning.
Mercury Books and Library Trip
We also made another trip to the library and came home with even more space books.
Books have been a huge part of this unit. I don't expect my preschoolers to remember every fact we read, but hearing the same vocabulary and concepts repeatedly through books, activities, crafts and videos gives them so many different opportunities to make connections.
And at this point, our space book collection from the library is getting a little out of control.
Mercury Videos and Solar System Songs
We watched a few kid-friendly videos about Mercury throughout the week too.
Somewhere along the way, we discovered an entire solar system song channel on YouTube, and it has quickly become a favorite in our house.
We stuck mostly with the Mercury songs this week, but I already know these are going to follow us as we work our way through the rest of the planets.
And yes, that also means I now know far more children's songs about Mercury than I ever expected to know.
Learning Beyond the Planet Facts
The biggest thing I've realized during our preschool homeschool space unit is that the actual space facts are only one part of what they're learning.
During Mercury week, we worked on coloring, cutting, gluing, fine motor skills, listening, following directions, vocabulary, comprehension, problem solving and having conversations about what we were learning.
They were learning about Mercury, but we were also sneaking in so many of the foundational skills we're working on at these ages.
That's exactly what I wanted this preschool homeschool year to look like.
Fun, hands-on learning with plenty of room to explore whatever they're interested in.
We started with the Sun. We made it through Mercury.
Next stop: Venus!