Homeschooling: Astronomy

First I should give you a little background information on our school situation (in case the title of the post didn't give it away!). We are homeschoolers!! This will be our family's 2nd year. Last year I homeschooled my son in Kindergarten. This year he is doing first grade while my 3-year-old dabbles in preschool.

For science this year we are using Apologia's Exploring Creation With Astronomy along with the Astronomy Junior Notebooking Journal.

We have only done one lesson but my son is really getting into it! For the first lesson (What is Astronomy?) you learn basically what the science is about and you get to make your own model solar system. The directions in the book call for using different sized balloons, but for about nine bucks I decided to spring for the ready made styrofoam balls on amazon and have my son paint them. He is loving it!!

It also just so happens that I am taking an online astronomy class this semester. I've never been very interested in astronomy this is just how the schedules worked out this year but I am starting to get into it too.

Just so you know, I am all about field trips! I rock at field trips! I can google awesome places to go all day long. Isn't that one of the best perks of homeschooling anyway?! So in the two weeks that we've been studying astronomy we've already been on two field trips. The first field trip was to our local library to listen to an astronomer (and owner of a local observatory) speak. My son started to get a little antsy sitting there after an hour and a half but I think we both learned a lot!



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While we were there, we learned about star parties. Per wikipedia: A star party is a gathering of amateur astronomers for the purpose of observing the sky. Local star parties may be one night affairs, but larger events can last up to a week or longer and attract hundreds or even thousands of participants. Which brings me to our second field trip. I looked up the local astronomy club's website and found a star party which turned out to be a guy with 2 telescopes and a high school teacher with her students. I apologized for crashing her class but before that we got to see the moon, a globular cluster and the andromeda galaxy through a telescope. It was awesome! Apparently star parties can get pretty huge and there is supposed to be one that lasts about ten days somewhere in the panhandle of Oklahoma at the end of the month. These astronomers really get into it and I can see why!

Next field trip: Ten Acre Observatory!!