Constellations

March 3, 2016

We continued our Space unit today! I turned the lights off and had all the children lay back on the carpet. I told them to envision it was a warm summer night and they were laying in the grass and looking up at the sky. I gave them about 2 minutes before turning on the lights. Each student shared something they saw in the sky. Many students shared similar answers, clouds, stars, the moon and someone even saw constellations. Her answer was my perfect lead into today's lesson. (Don't you just love when that happens!!)

After discussing what a constellation was each student had the opportunity to go to the chalkboard and take one of the constellation cards I taped there. We transitioned back to the Smartboard where we were about to virtually enter a planetarium. This was a great website I found and I was super excited that I could do this activity with my students.  My goal was to have everyone find the constellation they had chosen in our virtual planetarium. I'm not going to lie; I was a little nervous that this would be too challenging and my lesson would turn into a flop. However, after consideration I decided to go through with it. It went better than I ever expected!

Lesson learned...it doesn't hurt to try something once. You'll never know if you don't try.

After that activity each student got paper, mini marshmallows and toothpicks to make a replica of their constellation. I was so pleased with this lesson, and this whole unit in general!