Two weeks ago, your kids learned how powerful gravity can be. This time around we expanded on further understanding gravity influence by having our Cogitanian's send a rocket into 'space'.

We investigated the history of our understanding this force and followed that to our current understanding of the concept. The interesting thing about gravity is that we understand that it works.

During our session, we explored the concept of navigating by starlight. We first learned about the history of this skill. We discussed the Odyssey and the lore of Polynesians, as well as various techniques used to measure the parameters of the sky to help align with constellations. We then created our own take-home star maps.

Facing the pitch black space and having gloves on their hands they were given a challenge to build a 10” tower from pics and clay balls that will hold a tennis ball for 3 sec.

Your girls have been exposed to the concept of size, scale and proportion on an astronomical scale. Using a toilet paper role they have been marking in an accurate scale distances of all the 8 planets of our solar system from the sun! In order to do that, they needed to find a common unit for the distance.

This week, we learned about the scale of the solar system and the general motion of the planets, dwarf planets, and comets. We first used a video and our own meter stick to see the scale of the solar system if the Sun was the size of a soccer ball. We then, talked about the shape of the orbitals and looked at the numbers that help define the shape.

We learned the structure and nature of the Sun. We learned how energy travels from the core of the Sun to the earth. Then, we modeled the Sun itself using clay.

For this lesson, we focused on scale and size of stars, briefly returning to the size of planets and the overall size of our solar system, as well.