Constellations & Earth's Movement

Space...the final frontier....and my original favorite topic to teach in Science! I say original because as I've learned more and more about the other things I teach, I enjoy those too. But, space will always hold a special place in my  heart. Star Trek: TOS is how my dad introduced me to that final frontier...and I'm the daughter he took to Kennedy Space Center because....well, because I actually stop to read each and every plaque - just like him. KSC is an amazing place to visit, if you ever get down here to FL.

Now, the one benchmark I found difficult to explain to my students at the beginning of my career was SC.4.E.5.1 - why constellations seem to move across the sky. I used the textbook for the first few years....just reading through it with the kids...but, of course they didn't really understand it and I had nothing in my "bag of tricks" to help explain it any better.

Then, I found this book. I love this book. It's got a ton of great resources in it (including a bunch of information about the Space Race that I used for an amazing Socratic Debate during my opinion writing unit). But, what really helped my science class was the constellations activity. Basically, you have 12 students hold the 12 constellations in a circle around a lamp. The rest of the class gets on the inside of the circle and pretend to be Earth. In this way, the students get the full understanding that the constellations on the other side of the Sun are still there, but since you have to face the Sun in order to face them, you can't see them because of the blinding light of our own star. Such a simple idea, but so powerful for my kids. I also incorporated the idea of making the kids figure out whether the Earth turns clockwise or counter-clockwise as they had to make the Sun rise in the east and set in the west. (Everything in this solar system - EXCEPT VENUS - rotates counter-clockwise. And Uranus....but that's a whole different story!) Now, if your kids are really good - or with some guidance - make them figure out how the Earth revolves around the Sun. (Counter-Clockwise) I have the month the constellations are most visible written on the back of them and someone inevitable finds theirs and realizes I've put them in order around the Sun...the constellations then start telling the Earths which direction they need to move to keep the calendar moving along in the right direction.

And then switch so all constellations get to be an Earth and vice versa.

This activity is great...but then I found something on CPALMS to add to our notebooks that solidified the lesson in the students' minds. (The whole lesson is great, but this one notebook activity is simply amazing - if you don't have time for anything else.)

The instructions say to draw 3 constellations (I chose 4 because it was easier to draw in the 4 corners of the page) on a sheet of black construction paper. We also drew a Sun in the center instead of cutting out Suns. Then, we drew an Earth on a small scrap of construction paper. We put a little man on the Earth so that we could spin him around and show day/night as well as his location in relation to the Sun. Everything was glued into our notebook and our little Earth Man lives in a pocket on the next page with the students' reflection.

A note about the crayons...I won those in a random Crayola contest several years back. The colors are not your normal Crayola colors (no true reds, blues, or greens!), but they are AMAZING when it comes to black paper. I save them for very specials occasions - mainly my unit on Space.