Category Archives: Astronomy
Planet Ornaments
Every year my kids and I make ornaments. They love making the glass ball ornaments that you swish paint and rubbing alcohol into for a marbled look. This year they got the brilliant plan in their noggins to create the … Continue reading
NORAD Tracks Santa
Every Christmas we check out the NORAD site. They’ve got stuff about Santa up there already. They keep track of how he’s coming with toy production, how the reindeer and the elves are doing and so on. They have a … Continue reading
Sunshine City
Normally we don’t share super formal lesson plans on Layers of Learning, but when the Lego Company asked for lesson plans about renewable energy for their LegoSmart contest last year, we were happy to submit ours! Here’s the complete lesson … Continue reading
Asteroid Diversion Schemes
The asteroid Apophis is nearing Earth. It will pass our planet in 2029 and 2036. The Russians want to visit it on it’s first pass in 2029. The Americans disagree, they say it should be visited in 2036. Both countries … Continue reading
Space Pioneers
Robert Goddard The beginnings of rocketry go way back . . . to the Greeks of course. Doesn’t everything go back to the Greeks? People have been testing methods of propulsion for thousands of years, but it wasn’t until Isaac Newton wrote down … Continue reading
Solar Energy
Life has always depended on energy, but until just a few hundred years ago that energy was mostly low level, unorganized, passive energy in the form of sunlight which is essential in plant growth. Sunlight is still one of the best sources … Continue reading
Comets, Meteors, and Asteroids
What’s the difference between a comet and an asteroid or a meteorite? A comet is a big frozen chunk of ice and rock that orbits the sun or another star or zooms madly around space until pulled into the orbit of a star. As they … Continue reading
Solar System Model
Make a solar system model out of a kit or foam balls from a craft store. Get a bunch of books from the library and let the kids learn what color to paint each planet. My kids made sure to … Continue reading
Crazy Galileo
A long long long time ago a scientist named Galileo declared that without air resistance any two objects would fall at the same rate. People laughed at Galileo for that, among other things. Imagine a feather and a hammer. Which … Continue reading
Is There Zero Gravity in Space?
It seems obvious. Astronauts float around in their space ships up there so there must not be any gravity, right? Not so fast. Gravity is the force between any two objects that have mass. There is mass in space (you, … Continue reading
Mapping the Night
To make a map of the earth at night, you need: An empty cylindrical container, like a cardboard oatmeal box A blank outline map of the earth, do each continent separately, the maps can be found and printed here for … Continue reading
