What Are Planets?

The spoken lesson

"A planet is a large world orbiting a star. Our solar system has eight planets. Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are rocky terrestrial planets with solid surfaces. Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants with deep hydrogen-and-helium envelopes. Uranus and Neptune are ice giants whose interiors contain greater proportions of water, ammonia, methane, and related materials. Planets differ in size, mass, gravity, atmosphere, temperature, rotation, year length, moons, rings, weather, and magnetic fields. Rotation creates day and night, while axial tilt helps create seasons. Giant planets do not have an ordinary solid surface on which a person could stand. Planets are diverse worlds whose properties reveal how planetary systems form and change." DESIGN REQUIREMENTS: Use comparative property cards and realistic imagery. Avoid standing figures on giant planets, fixed-colour claims, memorisation races, "best planet" scoring, or treating a hypothetical distant planet as confirmed.