Refined Metals Academy: Unit Study: Stars

Monday, October 10, 2011

Unit Study: Stars

This was actually from a couple of weeks ago, but I forgot to post it…

We spent one week on learning a little bit more about stars. I kept it pretty light and pretty much only did the things in the MFW manual, only adding in some more books and I think one activity (that didn’t turn out).

Books we Read

Stargazers by Gail Gibbons
- I loved this book, informative but not too wordy. Great illustrations explaining some difficult concepts
The Sky is Full of Stars by Franklyn Branley
God Made Outer Space
First Encyclopedia of Science (an Usborne Book)
How Big is a Million? (an Usborne Book)
- Adorable little story about a little penguin who is out to find out how big a million is, very helpful to at least explain that a million is really, really, big
Sun, Moon and Stars (an Usborne Book)

Discussion, Experiments & Journaling

We talked about the distance that light travels. We talked about how it takes 2 seconds for light to get to earth from the moon. It takes 8 minutes for light to reach earth from the sun. And it takes 4 years for light to reach us from our closest star (Proxima Centauri something). I explained to Treyton that that meant that the light that came from Proxima on the day that Lexie was born has not even gotten to earth – we haven’t even seen it yet! Treyton thought that this was pretty amazing.

We tried to illustrate this in Treyton’s science journal.

Next we talked about the biggest star we could see from earth (with a telescope) called Betelgeuse. This star is 600 times bigger than the sun. We cut out a 1 inch circle which represented the sun and had Lexie hold it on one side of our yard

we then measured out 600 inches (16 3/4 yards) and had Treyton stand there. This was a humbling illustration showing just how small the sun (and in essence we really are)!!