Astronomy Lesson One

For our science studies this year, we are using a wonderful book entitled Exploring Creation with Astronomy. The kids are having so much fun with it! Justin bought a very nice telescope and we've viewed Jupiter, Venus and the moon so far. For actual class time, they have learned the definitions to words such as astronomy, solar system, gravity, gravitational pull and satellite. We've discussed the various reasons why God made all the wonderful things in our solar system and how mankind has used them throughout time. They are memorizing the planets in order in relation to the sun with the fun mnemonic, My very early morning just started under Nancy's pancakes.  :) We've been introduced to Copernicus and Galileo and we've learned about NASA.

Today as we wrapped up our first of thirteen lessons, we made a model of the sun and planets with balloons. It was a lot of fun and work blowing up the different sized balloons. To no one's surprise, Tyler was the most successful in blowing up the balloons.  :)  It really gave us a good idea of the size of each of the planets. Our Saturn is way too big, as Jupiter is by far the largest planet, but that's just how it worked out. We discussed how much bigger Jupiter is than all of the other planets, so much bigger in fact, that all eight of the other planets could fit inside it. We also talked about how much bigger the sun really is and how our model couldn't possibly accurately reflect its size. It would be entirely too large to hang from our ceiling.  I think we're off to a great start with Astronomy and looking forward to the next lesson!