Star Lab

I was thinking what I would post on tonight and thought about a great activity I was in charge of at my last school in California. I called the night Star Lab and I invited the students at the school to bring their families in the evening to learn about space. Here are the stations that took place:

1-Star Lab-it was a dome that inflated. (Picture above) There was a projector in the middle that projected a simulated night sky onto the ceiling. People crawled through a tunnel and I told them about the different constellations and some Greek mythology that went with them. This took about 20 minutes per group. I could only get about 20 people into the dome at one time so I sent home sign ups the week before. This was the favorite station of the night. Here is the website:

http://www.starlab.com/


2-I had the computer lab set up on the NASA website for students and parents to explore. I had a teacher in the lab to help with questions or technical difficulties. H ere is the website:

http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html

3-The local astronomy club came and set up their telescopes for the students to look through. Saturn was visible and the students loved this.

4-I had books for the families to look through while they waited for the other stations.

5-I had toliet paper rolls and paper out and the students punched out constellation patterns into the paper. They were able to look through the paper and see a small pattern.

6-Students figured out distances onto a paper-cash register tape (how big the solar system is in relative terms).

7-Students made paper space ships (NASA had this activity all prepared). The students really liked this.


I found a website that is offering to give teachers up to 5 telescopes free. You only have to pay the shipping. It seems like a great buy. I am posting the website for you to look at

https://www.galileoscope.org/gs/

This was one of my favorite things I have done while being a teacher. I would love to do it for the school in Utah but they don't have a Star Lab-they are very pricey.