Blasting off to Kindergarten

As the year winds down, we are heading to the stars as we learn about "What's up?" We began this week by reading I Want to Be An Astronaut by Byron Barton. I realized that book is now a bit out of date since it talks about traveling in the space shuttle. It does help the kids begin to grasp the concept of what it means to go into space in lower earth orbit. 

Our big cardboard box has morphed into a space shuttle (or rocket) and the kids have flight suits and headsets to wear as they go on missions into orbit. 

We made "telescopes" from paper towel tubes. The black paper taped to the end has one of the constellation's shape in pinholes. When you point it into the light, it looks like a night sky view. 

Since it is so nice out, we took advantage and made some star-scape art by splattering white and yellow paint onto black paper. Some of them looked like the night sky, some looked like galaxies or nebulae. We are going to learn about the eight planets (sorry Pluto, you are but a dwarf planet now), and the constellations in the next few weeks.
 
We have already learned about gravity. My favorite experiment to do with the kids is to count to three and have them all jump up at the same time. The direction I give them is that when they jump up, they should try to stay up in the air. We try a few times, and then we discuss how gravity will always pull us down to the earth (or to the closest flat object that is on the earth). We also tried dropping objects of different sizes to see which would hit the ground first. It didn't matter what the difference was in the sizes of the objects, they always hit the ground at the same time. The kids thought that we might get a different result if we tried it from one of the high parts of the playground structure. We spent the better time of outdoor play on Tuesday verifying that gravity pulls down all objects to the earth at the same rate, regardless of their difference in size or weight. The only exception to this rule is when something is so light that the air resistance keeps it from falling straight down (like how a feather or plastic bag float down to the ground). 


Bennett Dawson, our resident rocket builder in Farifield, will be in next week to build individual rockets with each of the kids. We'll have a "Launch Day" on Tuesday, May 21st, as long as the weather cooperates. Each child will get to launch their rocket. Last year we had a great crowd of middle schoolers and parents to share in the joy of blasting off. Anyone is welcome to join us.