Landing on Mercury

In the spirit of the Magic School bus we rode through the solar system this week and landed on Mercury. We left earth over a month ago after a brief introduction to what astronomy is and can be, and then took a long look at the sun. I know you are not supposed to do that. We used our special goggles designed for exploration of this sort and saved our precious eyes. This week and last week we were on Mercury.  It was very hot, and very cold and very dusty. Once we got home we put these pages together to remind us what we learned about the planet of contrasts.

Here is a look into T.J's astronomy notebook.

The page on the left contains pictures from our activities when we were learning about the sun. On the right is Mercury at night. Due to the lack of atmosphere this planet is a very cold -300 degree Celsius at night. And BTW night lasts here for roughly 59 days.

Another look into T.J.'s book.

This is mercury during the day. It is very very hot due to it's being the planet closest to the sun. The day here also lasts 59 days. The mini books for these two pages were from A Journey Through Learning lapbook package and Knowledge Box Central lapbook  package both geared for direct use with Exploring Creation with Astronomy by Fulbright.

To remember just where our trip led us, we drew mercury on our map.

To understand how mercury got so many craters and how they were formed we dropped different size rocks into a pan of flour. With the left over flour we did the following....

Using the flour from the crater activity we made salt dough. With a little black powder paint added we made replicas of the planet mercury.

Zak holding his mercury model.

And that is all for this week...next time Venus!