Sunday, October 14, 2007

What if we shrunk the sun?

We were learning about the stars in our Adventures in Father's World lessons.

Through the course of talking about stars, we've discussed that God made each one and knows their names. We can see the stars so well from here that we've stood on our driveway and looked up and each one of us has said "Wow."

We talked about Betelgeuse being so large. It was fun learning that "Betelgeuse" means in Arabic "Giant's shoulders". To Mini-Me she thinks it sounds really gross.

If we shrunk our sun to 1 inch diameter...

we'd have to shrink Betelgeuse down to 16 2/3 yards diameter. That's a huge scale.

Here are the kids at the ends of the diameter points. My biggest worry is that we didn't mark the length right. I'm just glad it wasn't suggested that we mark the actual circle -- That would have taken up territory in the yards of 4 neighbors.

Mini-Me had so much fun doing this she had to write to her pen-pal about it and send pictures. I love having these teachable moments with them. I hope it's a memory now and not just school. I got caught up in Mini-Me's enthusiasm and had to tell you about it.

6 comments:

Halfmoon Girl said...

I think that these are such great learning moments. Bet she remembers that for a long time!

Mrs. Darling said...

I love moments like this. This what makes teaching my kids so fun. Glad you had a great time.

Monkey Giggles said...

It's moments like this -- that makes it all matter!!!! Thanks for sharing your ideas.

Have another happy homeschooling day

Hugs and smiles

Tracy said...

I am always amazed by the size of our universe. The boys love doing things like that too, and it just kind of puts things into perspective and just makes you say, "Wow!".

Sharon Brumfield said...

Hands on visual lessons-I always learned better that way.

Vicki said...

Cool lesson. Looks like you are all having a great time!