We just finished up a two week astronomy unit study as part of our “travels” through the southeast, which is one of my very favorite things to explore with kids! (You can find what we did in the northeast HERE and the midwest HERE!) I guess it is because I was completely obsessed with space as a child. Proof from my 9 year old self’s journal:
I was – and still am – totally enthralled with everything astronomy, so when it’s time to learn about it with the kids, I go all out!
When I was teaching, I had inflatable planets I would hang from the ceiling in my classroom, so I decided to go ahead and put them up in our learning space at home as well! I kinda want to keep them up the rest of the year, not gonna lie.
We used a ton of different books for our astronomy unit study including the Smithsonian’s Universe, which is HUGE but chock-full of facts, diagrams, incredible photos, etc. Highly recommend!
INTRODUCTION
Before getting too in-depth we read Stephen Kellogg’s How Much is a Million again. Since measurements of space are so hard to fathom, I wanted to review how much a million, billion, and trillion really are, and this book does a great job comparing those amounts in kids’ terms.
We then learned about what a light year is, which is hard for an adult to wrap their head around, much less a 9 year old! But this video did a good job at explaining it and also visualizing how light travels:
We also reviewed some basic concepts that my son has some prior knowledge about including the 3 main states of matter (we get into plasma when talk about stars), atoms, and mass.
Gravity is also something we reviewed, and I found this demonstration to be a GREAT visual on how it affects the planets and fabric of spacetime:
We watched this quick simulation of the solar system’s formation:
And the last thing we reviewed before jumping into new territory was Earth’s rotation. We ran through this awesome lesson about just how fast the Earth spins. I’ve touted their praises before, but Mystery Science is one of my go-to sources for great hands-on science lessons. I just love the way they explain and visualize concepts for kids.
The final thing we did together as part of the introduction to our unit is watch episode 4 of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey on Disney Plus. A wonderful series, and this episode in particular was a great way to introduce our unit!
THE MOON
Our first deep dive into our astronomy unit study was into learning all things the Moon! We used The Moon Book by Gail Gibbons as our anchor text, which touches on everything from its surface to phases. Gail Gibbons is always an author I turn to when we do science!
We looked at many photographs in our Universe book of the moon’s surface and watched a video of the Moon landing in 1969. The moon’s phases is what we spent the most time on, though, and we did quite a bit to explore them.
We did this lesson by Mystery Science first because it really encourages kids to think through why the moon looks different throughout the month. Part of this lesson involves doing a demo at home, and this was definitely helpful to understand how the phases occur. Take a look:
We then put names to the phases and practiced this a few ways. The phases aren’t as easy as they seem! Waning/waxing and gibbous/crescent can get very confusing. The main thing I tried to emphasize was that waxing=getting brighter and waning=getting darker. One thing I used to help remember this was “LESS LIGHT LEFT” which means that if the left side of the moon is lit, then it is getting LESS lit, AKA waning. I don’t know if it helped at all, but I tried!
My yoga mat actually has some of the phases on the moon on it, so I brought it down, whipped up some labels, and then had my son see if he could figure out which phases were missing and label the ones that were present. Use what you have, right?!
I also got this printable activity from Arrows and Applesauce on Etsy. Her resources are beautiful and this was just another activity to physically reinforce what we were learning.
We wrapped it up with a tried-and-true activity that has stood the test of time: Oreo moon phases! I did this with my very first group of students in 2004, and it never disappoints!
STARS
PLASMA
Our next deep dive was into stars! We began by learning about the 4th state of matter that doesn’t get talked about much in the elementary grades: plasma! It’s kind of important to know about plasma since stars are basically made out of it. So, we talked about it and explored where in the universe plasma is found by reading through and sorting these three part cards by Cosmic Montessori.
My son thought was excited because he was in the process of researching aurora borealis for his research report in writing and through this sort realized that auroras are made of plasma too (he chose the topic and it was just perfect since it fell in line so nicely with what we were learning in science)!
Of course we HAD to explore a plasma ball! What a hit this was! It led to a lot more questions and research! He was enthralled.
OUR SUN
After learning about plasma, we moved on to learning more about our own magnificent life-giver: the sun. We started with this introductory video from National Geographic:
We looked at some incredible recent photographs in our Universe book of the sun and then did some further investigating on how and why seasons change through this great Mystery Science lesson. We also explored how white light is made of colors by exploring the prisms we have up in our learning space.
THE LIFE CYCLE OF A STAR
We spent most of our time exploring the life cycle of stars. I used this PowerPoint by Karen T on Teachers Pay Teachers as an anchor and then we read from multiple books about each stage.
I got these three part cards from MinkybubsMontessori on Etsy for both an average star’s life cycle and that of a massive star.
We then watched this video by Kurzgesagt illustrating just how immense stars can get in our universe. It will make you feel VERY small! (Kurzgesagt is a favorite channel of ours to explore all things science!)
I also found this channel which is AWESOME at comparing all kinds of things in the universe and visualizing them in a way our brains can understand. My son LOVED their dragon video! But this one about the universe is great!
We wrapped up learning about the life cycle of a star by creating a poster showing the path of an average star and that of a massive star! We had fun doing this together! All the ideas were his, including the font style, outline, and colors of the title. I just hot glued everything and cut the styrofoam. He was very proud of the final product!
GALAXIES
The final thing we learned about was galaxies. Galaxies, Galaxies! by Gail Gibbons was our anchor text for this portion and we did a lot of reading in our Universe book as well because it has so many great photos of galaxies inside.
We also watched this video by SciKids Show which explains why we can see the Milky Way even though we are in it:
I had planned to do this galaxy painting activity to wrap it up, but the star life cycle poster was enough arts and crafts for my son. lol But it might be something your child would like to do:
Finally, we did a virtual field trip through the Kennedy Space Center! Since we are “traveling” through the southeast region of the US, I figured we would tie in an astronomy unit since the Kennedy Space Center is located in Florida. So we read up on it and watched this video tour:
Next year we will be diving into more specifics about space technology and being an astronaut, but this was a nice teaser!
We finished up our astronomy unit study with trying some freeze-dried ice cream. One of my favorite things when I was younger was visiting the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. We currently live close to DC, so I would’ve taken my son, but they are doing some massive renovations and will be closed until the fall, so we will hold off until it is all done so we can go enjoy it in its full glory! (However, we did get to go to their annex in Chantilly which has a space shuttle!) But when I was a kid, I remember my grandma went with us to the museum, and at the end she bought me some freeze-dried strawberries, AKA “astronaut food” and I LOVED them! Well, my son did NOT have the same feelings as me! lol! He was not a fan, but it was fun to try! You can grab some of these from Amazon.
I hope you have as much fun during your astronomy unit study as we did!
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