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I’ve been thinking about how I introduce and make real some of the concepts of the “Universe” SciPack to kindergarteners. First, I encourage my students to keep an eye on the sky in order to provide them some of the most basic information about the objects in the universe that surrounds us. [Of course, I warn them, as my teacher always did, not to look directly at the sun ever.]
We have spoken about what we have seen in the sky. Everyone mentions the sun, the moon, and the stars. We talk about the clouds and rainbows. We talk about birds and planes. Often, someone even mentions the mountains since they seem to “poke” into the sky.
First, we talk about how far away the objects in the sky are. The students know that birds are closer than planes, but we also talk about the fact that clouds vary in their places in the sky, some closer and some farther than planes.
We also talk about fog, rare in Hawai’i, and how it is a cloud that is right on the ground, so in that case, some clouds are closer to the ground than bird are.
We talk a little too about the mountains, which I help them to understand, are the world itself. Some parts are higher than others, but all of them are the “ground,” which the outer surface of the planet on which we live.
We then talk about the moon and how it is closer than the sun, and we talk about why the sun looks smaller than the moon does because the sun is so much farther away, even though the sun is so much larger.
The facts about the sun and the moon help the students understand how the stars, because they are so much farther away, look even smaller than our sun even though many are larger than the sun.
I am often surprised by how much even such basic information is such a source of wonder for my young students. Their surprise reminds me of how much there is to learn when we are small and how every little bit of information is significant in itself.
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