April's Theme - Space

I am amazed at how interested in our new theme the children are - and how much they already know! I will be working hard at keeping one step ahead of them. Space is a pretty BIG theme, as you know, so I thought it best to concentrate on one "little" part - stars and constellations. (You may have noticed the challenge word on our weekly spelling list.) We started with learning a bit about the star that is closest to us, and the reason we are able to exist on our beautiful planet earth - the sun.

Today I passed out a photograph of the sun:

I asked, "If this was the real size of the sun, how big would the earth be in comparison?" All children seemed to know that the sun was much, much bigger than the earth. I asked the students to draw the size of the earth on the back. Some of the drawings looked like this:

I then passed out a picture of the earth compared to the picture of the sun - see that tiny little dot?

After that, we read an informational book about the sun and watched a 20 minute DVD about stars. We learned that the distance between the sun and the earth is about 93 million miles. Using our cutouts of the sun and the earth, we found that using the same scale the distance would equal 65 feet. Luckily, I happened to have a piece of string exactly 65 feet long. Coats on, we were off to the sidewalk in front of the school:

See the sun? This is the view from Earth!