Astronomy Unit

One of the topics James wanted to study about this year was the solar system, light and magnifying things. I used as the basis for our studying George’s Secret Key to the Universe  by Lucy and Stephen Hawking (interesting that amazon has Stephen Hawking as the first author but the book has him as the second. These things are important. She is his daughter, for those who are curious). Regardless, it’s a wonderful book, written at I would say, about a 5th grade level, assuming a middle schoolish science understanding. James is an advanced science student; he could not have tackled it solo (reading wise he could have and has requested the second book. I plan to let him read it on his own) and gotten the full science information out of it, guided it was perfect. It’s definitely not for all second  graders (no objectionable content at all, just for understanding).

O.k., that aside, topics  pulled out are roughly in this order:

Moon: Activities – Look through with binoculars or telescope, watch for a month, model with an orange or ball why we never see the dark side, look at video of landing

Stars: look at video of birth and death of a star, learn constellations, stars, myths. We’re using these books: The Stars and Find the Constellations  by H.A. Rey.

Comets: make a comet out of dry ice

The Solar System: Walk a scale model of the solar system (takes a lot of space – 1/2 a mile), comparisons of different planets, look at photos on-line of different planets (the ones at JPL of mars can be seen in 3-d if you have the glasses), look at planets with binoculars/telescopes.

What is needed for life on a planet?/Earth

Neutron Stars

Black holes: This site is fun http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/black_holes/modules.html . This book is particularly good: Icarus at the Edge of Time . The weird thing is that, so far as I can tell, it only comes in a board book (large sized) edition and I can’t imagine that age range getting much, anything other than “ohh, pretty pictures” out of it. Odd.

Now, there is a lot of other science information in the book, information on temperature, physics, particles, matter, and we discussed it as it came up. These are the topics I gave special, extra attention to. In addition, James and his dad have been watching The Universe for sometime and added recently Roving Mars. We also spent some time on the history of astronomy.

James read Along Came Galileo made a galileoscope, which, honestly, except for the first day, we haven’t made much use of yet (we’ll get there). We also read Nicholas Copernicus: The Earth is a Planet and Maria’s Comet (I wasn’t that impressed, but lots of people like it). We used Dk’s The Universe as a reference. What I would like is a book about the Aztecs and astronomy, preferably a picture book, anyone have anything? Obviously our study had a western bent and while we’ve read books referencing in particular the Aztec calendar and how precise their astronomical measurements were, we didn’t really touch that in our astronomy study.

So, we are continuing in our astronomy study, at this point the more hands on, viewing portion will begin. It’s a topic that we’ve cycled around to a couple of times, because James loves it, so there’s certainly much more you can do on some of the more basic topics (I actually added in some from memory that we didn’t actually do because we’ve done them before). This time around, he really got interested in black holes and has taken off in that direction for the moment. He certainly knows more about them than I did when I was 20  his age. In addition to the second of the George series (George’s Cosmic Treasure Hunt), I’ve ordered him The Time and Space of Uncle Albert. It’s also the first of a series; we’ll see how he likes it.

A brief apology to those of you who won books;  have not yet sent them (some of you – Mom #1) haven’t yet gotten me your addresses). I absolutely, positively, certainly will pack them up this weekend. Pinky promise.