The SunPlanet orbits, drawn to scalePlanets sit at their real positions around the Sun today
Make the Sun the size of…
Why a map of Britain?
Pictures of the Solar System have to cheat. Draw the planets big enough to see and the orbits come out far too small; draw the orbits properly and the planets vanish. The only honest way to show both is to use somewhere you already know the size of. Put the Sun in Greenwich at the size of the O2, and Earth is a lump of rock about as big as a family car somewhere near Chatham, while Neptune sweeps out a circle that would reach Oslo.
Everything in between is empty. That is the real lesson: space is not crowded with planets, it is almost entirely nothing at all.
Build it for real
Pick a smaller Sun, say a football, and the whole Solar System out to Neptune fits within a few kilometres: easily a long walk across a town or a country park. Mark the planets with chalk, stones or friends, and walk it. Many British towns and villages have permanent scale-model planet trails built this way, which are well worth looking out for.