. . . educational eggs: planets

Planet.eggs

With Earth Day and Easter so close together this year, and a lunar eclipse just this past Monday. . .

Paint

. . . I've had planets on the brain.

Tags

So, it seemed fitting that this year's educational eggs. . .

Venus

. . . revolve around. . .

Saturn

. . . a planetary. . .

Moon

. . . theme.

Educational Eggs: Planets

Materials:

Hard boiled or dry blown out white eggs
Your favorite egg dye and paints (we're partial to these natural dyes and paints but whatever you have on hand would work perfectly)
Your favorite books on planets (we used books as reference guides but if you need a quick image, this page was great for an easy color guide)
String
Felt
Paper
Typewriter or pen

To make the eggs, first dye your eggs (following the instructions for your egg dye) to colors that most closely match the planets you would like to depict. For the moon and the earth, I chose to leave them white and simply paint the surface. For the other planets I dyed a base color and then used paint on top where necessary. For my collection, I chose to include the sun in addition to the planets.

To make the blotchy look (like on the moon) I dabbed a paper towel on the wet paint, and to make the streaked look (like Venus) I wiped the paint around the egg with a paper towel.

To add the tags, I typed the names of the planets and used a quarter to trace a circle around them before cutting with scissors.

Using a large needle I sewed through the tag and tied it off with a simple knot at about 3" from the cut ends. With the needle still attached, I pushed it through the egg (you might have to shake it around a bit before it comes out the bottom hole) and sewed through a small circle of felt and tied a knot before cutting.

If you like these planet eggs, take a look at the "With the Kids" section below for links to other educational egg dyeing projects!

With the Kids:

Invite the kids to help you dye the eggs.
Grab your favorite books on planets and start looking for the ones you'd like to make.
Head over to this page and see how much you would weigh on the various planets.
Try out some of our other egg projects to add a little education to your crafting. We have Eggs for Ornithology, Botany, Entomology, Astronomy and Geography!