This year our focus for science is on astronomy, also known as the fourth day of creation. Some of the early activities included building a model of our solar system and developing a compass in our backyard. We spent an evening with Rex and Ali and their six kids (Sailor, Jack, Ben, Molly, Reagan, and Chad). During that night we looked at Venus, Saturn, and the moon through a telescope. We did some constellation spotting with the wonderful use of the app "Night Sky." The most interesting was setting up a sun and then walking proportionally how far it would be to get to the next few planets. After Mars, we had to get in a car and drive in order to set up the rest of the planets. That really gave us an idea of how far apart the planets really are.
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| I think we should follow the directions, so we have an accurate solar system. |
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| That's the sun...oooohhhh, how many steps are we going to have to go to get to Mercury? 180 feet...okay. |
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| We are now standing at Venus, it is very small compared to the sun, and we have now walked 360 feet from the sun! |
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| We used the sun to help us tell which way was north...the shortest shadow occurs facing north, so we measured out shadows from 11am until 1:30pm and we found it! |
