September 8, 2011

This Year's Curriculum: Astronomy

Last week was our first week of school and we eased into the schedule by only doing our core subjects of Bible, language arts, Math and History. But this coming week we will be adding in our electives: Latin, astronomy, art and music. The boys are very excited about astronomy. I promised them that exploring this subject means we get to camp out in the back yard on occasion and look at the stars. They squealed with delight. I too am looking forward to our star parties.

We are using Jeannie Fulbright’s Exploring Creation with Astronomy as our spine. I have organized our term according to her chapter headings in much the same way I did with our spine in Ancient Egypt. So our year looks like this at a glance:

What is Astronomy?


(I love that this lapbook is BW so my boys can do the coloring. It also perfectly coincides with our Astronomy spine)

Make a model of the Solar System with these idea with these planet diagrams (thanks Pioneer Woman!) and a few ideas of my own.



Sun


Magnifying glass activity

pin hole viewing box (experiment from ECWA)



Planets sticker book 

Mercury



crater activity (experiment from ECWA)

make a model of Mercury (experiment from ECWA)



Venus




Lava activity (experiment from ECWA)

 Radar activity (experiment from ECWA)



Earth



Advertisement to sell the Earth activity (experiment from ECWA)

Make a compass (experiment from ECWA)


Moon



phases of the moon activity (experiment from ECWA)

build a telescope (experiment from ECWA)


Mars



Living on Mars activity (experiment from ECWA)

Build an olympus mons (experiment from ECWA)


Space Rocks



Create a scale model of the solar system (experiment from ECWA)


Jupiter



Make a newspaper activity (experiment from ECWA)

Make a hurricane tube (experiment from ECWA)


Saturn



Make a venn diagram (experiment from ECWA)
Make a centaur Rocket (experiment from ECWA)



Uranus and Neptune



Act out a play about the discovery of Neptune (experiment from ECWA)

Make Couds (experiment from ECWA)


Pluto and the Kuiper Belt



Make a sloar system book (experiment from ECWA)

Make Ice Cream (experiment from ECWA)


Read some of Planets Moons and Stars

Stars and Galaxies

Mnemonic pharse for the stars (experiment from ECWA)

Make an Astronometer (experiment from ECWA)
Create a Constellation Plaetarium (experiment from ECWA)

(This old book looks intriguing, it is a bit long so we may not have time to read it, but I may.) 


I plan to use this book for our night time lessons in the back yard.

Space Travel



Let's visit the planets activity (experiment from ECWA)

Build a model Space Station (experiment from ECWA)





Because we love science so much we do astronomy three times a week. The first day we read through a chapter in Exploring Creation with Astronomy and narrate and discuss what it says, the second day we put the mini books together from our lapbook package from Journey Through learning. Then the third
day is Galileo day. On this day, we are getting to know Galileo and trying out some of his experiments We are using these resources for this day.
Galileo Day


FREE Notebooking pages of things Galileo said.



Now for some art and music and we will call it a day.
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