The study of astronomy with my 7 and 10 year old children was surprisingly fascinating! As usual, we used bits and pieces of this and that, with lots of living literature, a field trip and projects to learn tons about our solar system. I hope you find something useful to add to your own astronomy unit study!
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Elementary Astronomy Unit Study
Exploring Creation With Astronomy was our main teaching text. We didn’t complete every single chapter, but the ones we did were top-notch.
{balloon solar system model; the sun’s power to melt chocolate; moon crater simulation}
Beyond the text, I also added in a few lapbooking activities and lots of hands on projects. All the paperwork was put into modified lapbooks. Mini-books were glued on the first flap, while notebooking pages and worksheets were simply stapled together at the top of the other flap.
This unit study happened before the creation of Pinterest, so none of the hands-on activities shown below came from my astronomy Pinterest board. However, you can find lots of great hands-on additions for any astronomy unit there now.
{eating in space simulation; dehydrated food tasting; objects in space simulation; space station aim game}
{Oreo moon phases model}
The Living Books
Of course, living books were a big part of our learning!
The Extra Learning
The Creation Museum has a WONDERFUL planetarium that offers two shows – both informative and God-honoring. This museum is ALWAYS worth our drive for a field trip.
We found a few fun website games the kids enjoyed during their free time.
The Final Projects
All our unit studies end with final projects – otherwise known as project-based learning. The kids spent a couple of days preparing their projects before presenting them in front of the video camera. They were asked to choose whatever astronomy topic that most interested them and present about that topic in whatever exciting ways they liked. I don’t always give them this much freedom in project choice, but they did a GREAT job pulling together demonstrations, models and speeches.
Caleb chose astronauts for his topic. The presentation included a talk about astronaut suits (see his helmet and jet pack?), space shuttles, rockets, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, dehydrated food and thrust.
Mahayla’s presentation was on the topic of stars. It included information about the sun, other notable stars, constellations, how to use an astronometer to tell the brightness of stars and some information about light years.
Unit studies make GREAT memories. They can be a little more time-intensive for mom to plan, but the effort has always been worth it in our homeschool.
Please feel free to share links to your astronomy units in the comments!
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Wow! What a great list of resources. I would like to study the Solar System in January. We will be using this post as our guide 🙂
I’m glad the post was helpful, Channon! 🙂
This is our first year homeschooling and I am trying to put a unit together but didn’t know where to start. This was a big help and looks like a lot of fun. 🙂
Oh, that makes me so happy to hear, Amy! Blessings on your first year. You can do it!
Thank you SO much for sharing this. I’ve been trying to find a list of living books for our space unit study. This is exactly what I was looking for! I stumbled upon it and just ordered every single book from my library. Thank you so much for taking the time to put this together. I’m looking forward to trying some of the activities on your pinterest board as well– I think we definitely need to do the oreo moon phases 😉
Ooh, the Oreo moon phases activity is unforgettable! Enjoy the books, too! 🙂