The idea of making a science project based on huge rocks slamming into planets and leaving craters is exciting and scary from a child’s perspective. To explain how and why the craters are formed you can touch on concepts of atmosphere, gravity and vacuum of space.

To simplify the concepts for elementary school kids try to make your own craters in dough and flour.  Get a big baking pan and keep a mixing bowl handy. Also collect a number of things to make craters with. Get all sizes and shapes possible. Ping pong balls, golf balls, and even a tennis ball will do.  And of course get some flour and water to mix up the dough.

Now get set to make your own landscape. Get the baking pan out and add some dry flour to it in soft peaks. Make a basic landscape full of many rising “mountains”. Now get those balls out. Check out what kinds of craters they make in half the baking pan area. Compare shapes and depths of all the different objects.

Now mix up some flour with water and add that dough to the other half of the baking pan. Try and make craters in this part too. See how the same shapes make different sized craters in the dough. Try and explain the concept of density to them as well. Then you can graduate to more complex science projects.