NEW BEGINNINGS

Continuing on in our series 5 Days of Look Alive: Winter Schooling Ideas & Downloads, day 2 is Look to the Sky.  And wow, what an unexpected surprise when we looked to the sky when the meteor exploded somewhere over Russia.

Source The New York Times.

Did you take a day or two to talk about it? We did. Look at this video of a little girl hunting for pieces of it. So I marked a few resources to share with you that we found useful and now too it is stored here on the blog so when you I need a change in my school day, we can have these free resources.

Scholastic has a nice download that explains how some people get comets and meteors mixed up, so it gives some nice easy explanations. It says to use for grades 3-5. Click here to download it.

If you have a highschooler or two, check out this lesson plan page. Here is what it says: Student's measure sporadic meteor activity.  In this physics and astronomy lesson plan, students construct a dipole antennae, and build, test and wire a full wave diode rectifier between the dipole antenna and the laptop. Between building the crystal radio and Tiny learning about circuits lately, we decided to just read this lesson plan but it is another idea for something hands-on if we get the itch.

Then of course no unit is not near complete unless you try to involve some eating or snacking,  both of which we enjoy doing. We haven't tried this but my kids favorite cookies are chocolate chip. Me, I prefer oatmeal raisin, but I really don't count. Actually this lesson plan is extremely helpful too because besides having this fun recipe, it explains the difference between meteor, meteoroid and meteorite.

This lesson plan even has some Meteor Math. Click here to download.

What I had planned to share with you on this post before the meteorite hit was some free Star Gazing Guides from BBC TV Guide.

Look at this beautiful picture above from the 2012 Guide that is so helpful in explaining the sizes of the planets. I think that it is pretty enough and useful enough to frame and use in a school area, don't you think?

Here are your downloads.

Download the Star Gazing Guide for 2012 here.

Download the Star Gazing Guide for 2013 here.

The 2013 Stargazing Guide is obviously fairly new so I haven't had time to compare it with the one for 2012.  We used the 2012 guide but I wanted to list them both here so we have them when we need them.

If you missed Day 1, look below to grab those resources. Also, I'll have these resources organized here on the blog if you just want to use the categories and search for what you need that way.

Click here to grab those resources.

Looking to the sky refreshes us during the cold and raining days here in Texas and when we feel humdrum and uneventful in our day.  Inspirational quotes for me are tiny energizing pills I take each day. So I read this quote as I am ponder the lessons we can learn from the sky. Maybe it will spark you to keep looking to the sky to keep your day lively.

By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.

~Thomas Merton~

Hugs and love ya,