Star Gazing

Connections Academy offered a mini-unit of the solar system. While it was a great introduction to the unit, and the snow put a damper on our field trip to the capitol to culminate our President unit, we decided to delve deeper into the solar system. (Pinterest is a great thing)


We began by playing Play-Doh. Of course, the boys just thought mom was being a rockin' mama playing with them, but I had ulterior motives in mind. While they were happily making a mess, I was making the planet earth to show the earth's different layers, from the core to the mantle to the crust. The boys were astonished that mom could be so awesome once we watched a movie from Brain Pop Jr. about the earth and it's layers.





Then, I gave Turbo another earth ball and had him cut it open, he was pretty proud, and now a sliced open earth is being displayed on his shelf right along Han Solo's ship. {go figure}.



Next, we watched brief You Tube videos about constellations and set to work.

We got a paper plate, added some stars and created the Ursa Major constellation.



We poked holes in the stars, got a flashlight and headed to the darkest place in the house: Turbo's closet. Tank held the flashlight while Turbo held the plate in front of the beam of light to reveal the star constellation of the Big Bear; aka The Big Dipper; aka Ursa Major. It was pretty awesome.




Of course, Tank was super honored to hold the flashlight while we star gazed in Turbo's dark closet.


Afterwards, we began our Constellation Book. Using construction paper, we made an accordion-style book. Then we used water colors to paint the night sky.






After finding 16 different constellations, we set to work making the dots. Then after poking holes through the dots, we added yellow construction paper behind so that the constellations really shined through.

The result: Our very own Constellation Book.