It's a little gloomy today, but that's not why we're inside; N is still recovering from his tummy troubles. We are going low and slow.
To cheer him up, and to occupy E (who's getting tired of being home-bound), I decided last night to try making constellation viewers, which can turn a dark room into a miniature home planetarium. If you'd like to make one too, I wrote up a constellation viewer tutorial . (If you'd rather not make the viewer, you can also make the constellation cards I describe in the tutorial for something quick and easy.)
My kids are little, so they rarely get to stay up late enough to see the stars come out; what's more, we live in an area where light pollution is a big problem, and we can only see the brightest of stars. So not surprisingly, we never use our little telescope we bought soon after we were married.
The Original "Little Bear", aka the Little Dipper. The tip of his long tail is the North Star.
So, my kids get a kick out of this toy. E is 5, and we talked about how long ago, people looked up at the stars and saw pictures, and that they had stories to go along with them. Nowadays, we use these pictures (constellations) to figure out which stars we're looking at in the sky, and to find north if we're in the Northern Hemisphere.
We pretended we were outside at night, lying down on our backs in the grass.
Leo the Lion. To orient you, he's lying down, facing right. Photo by E.
I suppose making s'mores for a snack would have completed the experience, but poor N would only have been able to eat the graham crackers, so we put that idea on hold.
I also remembered a couple of introductory star-gazing books on my shelf that I haven't read in years I'm sorry to say. I especially like 365 Starry Nights, which opens each month with a group of stars that are most visible at that particular time of year, and brings a seasonal understanding and enjoyment to star gazing. It's perfect for kids to enjoy (although as I said, mine are a little young). Star Maps for Beginners is a classic, although probably outdated, so I guess I'd get a planisphere like this one, for our latitude (which you can find here), if the kids were a little older.
Which will happen soon enough.
