I'm sorry I haven't posted our pictures of our Colorado trip yet. We've has some computer problems. Mine is now dead. I will post those pictures soon. We sure have a lot to share!

Have you noticed something interesting in the sky just after dusk? Two bright stars gleaming in the sky next to a beautiful sliver of a moon. We've been watching each night as these two stars pass one another. Guess what that means, they're not stars, they're planets. Of course, you probably already knew that. Venus is always near the moon from our persepective this time of year, right?

Be sure to check the night sky tonight. We won't get to see this happen again for years to come.
Check this website for more information and for a nightly skywatch update.

Our summer astronomy club ended with a bang last month! Well, almost. We tried to make rockets and they kind of fizzled out. That's how science experiments go sometimes.

We set up a black light party for the kids. I was hoping to get a thrill of excitement out of them and they all seemed to love it. Yay! It's so fun to get kids excited. :-)

So, here's what we did. We covered the windows, door glass and walkway into the living room with dark blankets. Our goal was to make it as dark as possible. Then, we went out and bought black light bulbs at Target and replaced the light bulbs in the room. Those were about $4 each. While we were there, I spotted a Crayola Color Surge pack. Perfect! The kids could draw on this paper with those markers and they would glow! I love black light. The kids enjoyed doing this! We made the exterior of our rockets out of this paper in the black light room. Sarah even colored her face with the stuff!

A camera flash takes all of the excitement out of a black lit room. If you have a party like this, be sure to experiment with your camera to get fantastic pictures! Here's a better pic...
White stuff glows in black light. I covered the table with a fitted sheet. I also covered the cube cases in the back with a white sheet. Target had some great music to listen to... we found a CD that sounded spacey. That really set the atmosphere!
Notice the other glowing stuff? We bought some neon poster board and cut shapes of planets out of it. I used different size circle and oval punches and stuck those shapes all over the wall... and dropped a bunch on the floor. A friend gave us glow in the dark stars that we put all over the walls. I went to Party City to find the neon glow in the dark items like glow sticks, bracelets and earrings. We also found some great spinning tops that light up in different colors. They were so fun in that room! And, we bought white balloons. The kids colored the balloons in the neon markers. I think next time, neon balloons would be best.

Oh, in case you're wondering, those cool containers on the back wall contain scissors, glue and paint. The same friend that brought the stars brought those. She found them at Ikea. Very cool and spacey.
Oh yes, the flash is on again. Here's most of our crew!
And let's not forget the 3D rocket cake! Isn't it a blast? :-) Debbie Mireles made this especially for our group. She is a homeschool mom and cake making is one of her businesses. If you have a birthday coming up or anything just for fun, she does a wonderful job! Check out her site: 210-www.partyplanningbydebbie.com.

This class was so fun and we really miss our group! We used Apologia Astronomy for this class. One lesson per week worked out perfectly for the summer. We'll be looking for something to set up for next summer.

We just studied space rocks in Astronomy and we're eager to get out and watch the meteor showers coming up. The Delta Aquarid shower will appear tonight. The show will only feature about 20 meteors per hour, which isn't bad. But, the Perseid shower is scheduled to appear on August 12. That one will be impressive with 60 meteors per hour! You'll see one every minute! Kids love this. I remember laying out under the stars with friends one night watching the "shooting stars" everywhere.
For more info, check out this site:

From the Apologia booklinks section

An Indoor Solar System Activity Here is an activity you can do indoors to get an idea of how far the planets in the solar system are from one another. You will need 392 paper clips, 9 items that can be used to represent the planets (marshmallows, for example), and the floor of a pretty long (about 41-feet long) hallway. It is best to use a floor that does not have carpet, as the paper clips can get caught in the carpet. It is also best to use small paper clips. If you can find paper clips that are smaller than the standard 1.25-inch paper clips, a shorter hall can be used.

Procedure

1. Start at one end of the hall and put 4 paper clips end to end. Mercury orbits the sun at the end of the 4th paper clip. Put a marshmallow next to the end of the fourth paper clip to indicate Mercury is there.

2. Add 3 more paper clips to the line. Put a marshmallow next to the end of the last paper clip to indicate Venus is there.

3. Add 3 more paper clips to the line. Put a marshmallow next to the end of the last paper clip to indicate earth is there.

4. Add 5 more paper clips to the line. Put a marshmallow next to the end of the last paper clip to indicate Mars is there.

5. Add 37 more paper clips to the line. Put a marshmallow next to the end of the last paper clip to indicate Jupiter is there.

6. Add 44 more paper clips to the line. Put a marshmallow next to the end of the last paper clip to indicate Saturn is there.

7. Add 96 more paper clips to the line. Put a marshmallow next to the end of the last paper clip to indicate Uranus is there.

8. Add 108 more paper clips to the line. Put a marshmallow next to the end of the last paper clip to indicate Neptune is there.

9. Add 92 more paper clips to the line. Put a marshmallow next to the end of the last paper clip to indicate Pluto is there.

We decided to fit in our Apologia Astronomy over the summer and it turns out that there were other families interested in this as well. We maxed out due to the size of my home and there were still more interested. If any mom is interested in doing this at their home, I'm sure we can send some families your way that didn't get to join. We're having so much fun!


Lesson 1 - What is Astronomy

I didn't get a picture of the balloon project we did together, but we all blew up balloons accoding to scale down values in our book. We decorated the ballons to look like each planet. I don't suppose I realize how huge our sun is. Most models and pictures we see of our solar system have to misrepresent the size of our sun because you wouldn't be able to see the planets! Incredible!


Below is a solar system activity we did that was in the "bookextras" link on the Apologia website. This helped us to understand the distance between the planets. Since you have to have a password to access the info, I added that info here:
http://stricklandfamilycircle.blogspot.com/2008/06/solar-system-activity.html
There are neat activities like this all through the book!

Lesson 2 - The Sun
We really had fun today!!! We got to do three activities plus some. We made a pinhole viewing box so that we could view the sun safely. If you looked close enough, you could see some sun spots in your box.

Then, we got out the CHOCOLATE! We picked up lots of magnifying glasses at Analytical Scientific for .95 each. Every child got to melt some cholocate with the power of sun energy. One of them actually smoked and created a little flame! They got to eat their chocolate afterwards. How fun!

So, the reason this works is because they focused the suns energy to a small point, which make that point much hotter!

We came back in to cool off. Boy, it's been about 100 degrees every day this week! When we came in, we turned off the lights. We used our globe, a small ball and a flashlight to see what an eclipse looks like from space. That was fun.

Afterwards, we had a few presentations that were excellent!!! I am so impressed with the work these kids do and the excitement to do it! If you are a mom in this group, please consider sharing the writings your children shared on this post. (Click on the pencil on the bottom of this post. You will have to have a google ID which is very easy).

Below is a revolution/ rotation activity. The young lady in the middle is the sun. The darlin' a little shorter is the Earth and the doll-baby in the white shirt is the moon.. getting away. :-)

The object of this activity was for the sun to stay put, the earth to rotate and revolve around the sun and the moon to revolve around the Earth. It was fun to get it down!

Also part of this lesson was about why we see color. Taylor got a whole new complex idea of color and it was an excellent refresher for my high school physics study! Look it up some time... it's very interesting... another fingerprint of our mighty and awesome God!

Stay tuned to lesson 3! We'll be studying Mercury.