Astronomy Montessori Christ Centered Homeschooling

Astronomy Montessori Homeschooling, Christ Centered

"I am like a star shining brightly,

Smiling for the whole world to see.

I can do and say happy things each day,

For I know Heav'nly Father loves me."

My favorite part of homeschooling is the empowerment I have to study in depth the beauties of nature, and through that expand my children's perspective in the things that are real. We explore truths of science and the principles they teach us, principles that we can apply in our daily life. The Heavens is a great place for inspiration! 

We studied astronomy for a month. We LOVED our experiences in field trips, games, and Montessori activities. There are many fabulous ideas online, but we are lucky to just get them delivered monthly at no cost or prepping time because of our awesome Montessori Bin Exchange. Our activities included some wonderful materials. We added some wonderful field trips, FHE and scripture study, and we had a BLAST!

The planetarium rocks! Sugar plum loved our visit to BYU's planetarium.  In this picture she was pretending she was traveling through space, she identified Saturn because of the storm, galaxies and nebulas. She can tell you that a Star is a giant ball of burning Helium and Hidogen, and all the names of the planets in the Solar System.  She loves space!

Building stars with magnates is not only super fun, but it challenges their creativity and develops their problem solving skills, great for math, trigonometry, etc. The two older kids had the basic base figured out, then Sugar Plum came along, took their flat top off, and built the green triangular top and the point on top. :) They all loved it!

 Practical life skill building activity, pouring star shape pasta in two pitchers.

Sweet Boy is playing with galaxy glittery dough, fitting it into the star shaped glass container and figuring out just how much to cut out for the lid to fit on it and form a star.



This is how things roll in action!

Fourth Grader Star loved learning with these three part cards and the small objects about the different kinds of space crafts, the first man on the moon, the monkey on the moon.  She did it all and loved it!


After learning tons of facts on the sun from our Youtube Astronomy Playlist onour car c omutes, Sugar plum made this fab video :)

Puma Tyger blowwing up the biggest ballon to represent the Sun.  We had lots of fun dancing with it and bumping people with it.

Now check out Earth, the blue planet! So small compared to the sun! 

 Our scripture study on the degrees of glory, the Celestial (sun), Terrestrial (moom), Telestial (stars).

Sombrero Galaxy! viva Mexico! The Montessori bin exchange had an activity with the different kinds of activities, and many books, and that's where I learned about the three kinds of Galaxies!  This picture is from one of our weekly BYU's Planetarium trips. I love that the documentary movie changes every week, that an expert teaches about the night sky of the day, and that we get to go upstairs and take a look with thier fabulous telescopes, and their nice guides.  My Sugar Plum learned about the life-cycle of stars with one of the exchange activities, and the staff helped us find Beatle Juice, a red star, on the armpit of Orion.

Twinkle twinkle little star!

This wooden frame got transformed into an orbit. Showing here a planet orbiting the sun, but we also had the earth in the middle, and the moon orbiting the earth. You could also pretend a galaxy is orbiting the black hole in the center of the galaxy.  The kids loved to use big balls, marbles, bouncy balls, and compare their speed, and their effect upon collision. 

This moon sand was played with almost every day! For our opening circle one day I pulled this out along with our globe of earth, and we pretended how this rocket left earth, landed on the moon, and the US flag was placed there by Armstrong. They asked if it was still there now, and we went to look in a book (provided by the exchange) to see if we could find out (we found that the foot prints and the footprints will remain for centuries because there is no wind).  

 Puma Tiger loves the planet Earth! She can tell you that it is the only planet with life because of a perfect balance of temperature and elements. She can tell you that water is what makes up most of earth, and that because God is grand and powerful, there might be life in other planets as well.

 This was our visit to the Holdman Glass Blowing Studio at Thanksgiving Point. We had previously learned that sand burns and becomes glass, and that different elements react differently to different temperatures. Hence the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Neptun are gas giants. farthest from the Sun, and Mercury is a giant ball of iron metal, heavier elements closer to the Sun.

This is from the SLC Planetarium. Free admission, with lots of fabulous stuff.

Here are some extra pics just for fun:

 

This picture reminds me of an evening we were driving through the middle of nowhere, and we stopped the car, got outside, and in awesome wonder looked at the stars and considered all the worlds the Lord's hand has made. I sang for them How great thou Art, and we all sang in the car as we kept on driving Families Can be Together Forever.

When I first considered teaching toddlers astronomy I thought it would be way over their heads. But the Montessori Bin Exchange had it and I decided to give it a try! I am so glad we did. It provided many oportunities to consider God's great hand, and learn about the elements, and we just had such a blast! Thank you Stacy Palowsky for puttingthe bin together!

What are some of YOUR favorite memories, thoughts, scriptures, videos, field trips, or Montessori activities?