Thursday 4 August 2011

Space unit, day 2 - creation and the shape of the Earth

We started off by exploring our place in the universe
I had a giant box labelled 'The Universe' covered in pictures from the Hubble telescope - inside I had a series of small nesting boxes working from the Milky Way down to Our House (from Google Earth) as the smallest.

Universe, Milky Way, Solar System, Earth, Continent, Country, County, Village and our house
The girls revisited the space mat, labelling all the planets and singing their song.


We then discussed all the creation myths - world as a turtle, lotus flower petal etc.
We used an upturned bowl  and play doh people to explain why people came up with the turtle idea

and why they thought the earth was flat as opposed to round.

As we are Christian we focused on the Bible creation and discussed how scientists think the universe was created by a big bang and is still expanding (using a balloon with dots on to show the theory) - DD8 was so cute, she got all serious when telling her sisters that the scientists should know that God can make a big bang if he wanted so he still created the universe.

We discussed how early people thought the earth was a different shape (bowl for turtle shell, circular lid for flat earth and globe for sphere) and how the ancient Greeks learned that the earth was round like a ball by studying the moon.
We took a circle of paper for the moon and stuck it on the wall
Positioned our globe and shone a flashlight across the globe onto the moon - creating the crescent effect.
even when we turned the globe it still created the crescents.

we then recreated it with a flat circular lid - it did create a crescent in the right position but when you turned it around it created a strange moon which the girls all agreed they had never seen.
The bowl also had the same problem - it sometimes created a crescent but at other times created odd shadows.
We finished up by reading 'Eratosthenes - the Librarian who measured the Earth', narrating it and writing up our notes.

9 comments:

asliceofsmithlife said...

These look like great space activities! I love the nesting boxes and the Librarian book looks like a good one! I will be studying space with our children using Apologia Astronomy as my spine. I look forward to learning from your great space posts! Thanks for linking up to NOBH! :)

Belzi said...

There's some really good ideas here :)I love the flat earth/moon activity. Looks like your girls will have had a lot of fun. :0)

Montessori Print Shop said...

The nesting boxes are a fantastic idea! Can't wait to see if you are continuing it tomorrow.

Evenspor said...

I love the nesting boxes idea.

Sparklee said...

These are all such great ideas--I really love the experiments you did with the flashlight, globe, and other objects.

We read The Librarian Who Measured the Earth last year and really enjoyed it!

Kara Chupp said...

I love the nesting boxes...what a great idea! Love how you makde this so hands on...
Really fun post!
~Kara @ The Chuppies/NOBH

Eve | Inchworm Chronicles said...

Neat ideas! We focus on creation for history with our little ones, too. What creative ways you've found to share the topics with them!

jeanna said...

Love your nesting boxes, where did you buy them?
Thanks!

Zelda said...

I bought some nesting gift boxes from a card shop, downloaded pictures from Google Earth and stuck them to the lids.

Kids still play with them now :) yesterday the astronaut lived in the galaxy box and the doll live in the Europe box.

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