Illustrated Science Worksheets

Science at this age is mostly looking closely. A young child cannot read a paragraph about Saturn, but they can spot its rings from across the room, and once they can spot it they want to name it, count its neighbours and put it in its place in the line.

The first collection here is solar system worksheets, thirty printables that move from coloring to reading. The eight Color and Trace pages give each planet a hollow name to color, the planet itself and a dashed name to trace, with an orbit strip showing its place from the Sun. Six coloring pages add the Sun, the Moon, a rocket, an astronaut, a comet and the whole solar system on one sheet.

Then come the tasks. Children label the eight planets from a word bank, finish each name from its first two letters, number the planets from 1 to 8 and match five planet portraits to their names. Eight fact pages carry four short facts each, such as Mercury's 88 day year or Neptune's largest moon, Triton.

What should a solar system worksheet teach young children?

Three ideas are enough before age seven: the Sun is in the middle, there are eight planets, and each one looks different. A child who can say that Saturn has rings, Jupiter is the biggest and Earth is third from the Sun has the frame that every later lesson hangs on.

For preschoolers, start with Count the Space Pictures and Circle the Biggest Planet, which ask for no reading at all. Older children can work through the labeling and ordering pages, which carry a second page with the answers. To print everything at once, the collection includes two compiled PDFs: a 21 page worksheet pack and a 15 page coloring pack.

Every sheet also has its own Spanish PDF. The printing guide explains how to print only the first page of a two-page answer file and how to check the page range of the longer packs.