Last week we started to learn about Space. The first lesson- The Sun went quite well and D. were impatient to learn more.
Throughout the week we talked about what we already know and finally today we sat down and talked about different planets. The Planets by Gail Gibbons was a great help.
We read about half of it and decided to return to planets beyond Earth next week :)
We made felted model of Solar System mobile (something I was dying to do for a while now and,boy, was it a pain to put together as a mobile :D). There is this great tutorial, I, however, totally forgot to even look for a solar system kit, so we had to improvise. :D Initially it was planned as a wet-felted solar system, but since we have never wet-felted before it did not go quite as planned.
We used wool stuffing as a core for all planets (except for the smallest ones) and put colorful wool on top. D. wet-felted it all into balls in the sink and I added some needle felting after planets were semi-dry (we really wanted to hang the whole thing today :D). We attached it with some wire to a wicker wreath (no easy task I tell you) and voila! It's not to scale of course and Jupiter is almost upon the Earth now :D
As much as I love doing science with kiddos, I must confess it is not my usual favorite subject to plan (being a liberal arts major all my life (and being told by "kind" teachers that science is not my thing all my life)). However this year I'm thoroughly enjoying it. September and October were dedicated to animals in general, and Colorado animals in particular. The November and December are going to be all about Space.
We had a great start learning about the Sun and having most amazing field trip to the Fiske Planetarium and Sommers-Bausch Observatory in Boulder.
The trip was organized by our amazing co-op -we saw the show about Sun's influence on the Earth at the Planetarium and got an incredibly interesting observatory tour. It was a lot of information for us to process afterwards, but D. was absolutely charmed by being given a chance to look at the sun and two stars (all that is visible in the daylight) through the huge telescopes.
looking for Venus
I had no idea that there is such a great place not so far away from us and now I believe we will visit both planetarium and the observatory quite often. The observatory has open house events which allow general public to do some stargazing every Friday during semester.
Before going to the planetarium we read about our Sun and talked about its importance to all that is alive.
Our reading material this week included our favorite encyclopedia- Universe from DK publishing ( as I have written before the latest editions come with handy posters that look great on our wall)
This book is always fun for little ones :
Another source of information is a book that we found on NASA webpage (some info is still beyond D.'s comprehension, but he got a good idea of what sun does) Super Star meets the plucky planet storybook
