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When teaching elementry students about Earth and Space science what are some of the ways to best illustrate these topics so that students comprehend the topic clearly? 

Thanks for your question.  I am the lead author for the free on-lin introductory astronomy textbook from the non-profit OpenStax project.  It has many illustrations of space science concepts, and is open source.  It can be found at: http://openstax.org/details/astronomy   

I have also compiled a list of short videos that go with each chapter of the book (from places like NASA and ESA) that you can use to illustrate specific ideas.  That list is at: http://bit.ly/shortastronomyvideos 

First thing to do is encourage students curiosity as this can help sharpen their knowledge. When learning about earth we can involve the student's backgrouds in the classroom. You can talk about soil, water, and the atmosphere as they are able to see it around them. When learning about space like the solar system, the students can create a model of the planets. As a child i remember doing this and it really helped me understand this lesson.