A few years back we shared a series about how to teach the different areas of science at home, which you can find here:
The posts in the series have remained some of our most popular posts and so we thought we would help you all out by sharing our favorite experiments for each discipline!
So far, we have shared our top 10 biology experiments and our top 8 earth science activities. Today, we are going to share about astronomy. Most of these are science activities rather than experiments as we love to do lots of models to show things out in space. It helps to bring things that are way far out into the reality of our daily lives.
Without further ado, here are 6 astronomy experiments we don't want you to miss!
This activity is art meets science in space! You can create the life cycle of a star college as a poster or as a hanger mobile. Either way, your students will learn a lot about a star's birth, life, and death.
From the sun to Neptune (or Pluto if you are a child of the '80s), a solar system model helps students to visualize the planets and the distance between them. You can create a model on several sheets of paper or scale things up and create a model on the wall up your stairs or in your school room!
One of our favorite things to do when studying astronomy is to stay up a bit late and head outside to spot some of the things we are studying in the night sky. It's a simple way to make your studies come to life! We shared five tips for stargazing way back the beginning of the Tips for Homeschool Science Show that will help you get started with night sky spotting.
A globe, a light, and a post-it will all help your students understand what causes daytime and nighttime on the Earth. This simple astronomy demonstration will bring to light (pun totally intended) the cause of the 24-hour, day-long cycle that we experience each day.
Another thing we love to do for astronomy is to create a moon journal, where you observe and record the shape of the moon every night over a month. This project takes a bit of time to complete, but it is a great way for the students to see how the moon's shape appears to change night after night.
And finally, what list of astronomy activities would be complete without a few constellations. You can make cards with pinpricks for stars that you place at the front of a shoebox and shine a light through or you can create a geoboard of the constellations. But once your students know what to look for, they can try finding the constellations in the night sky when you are spotting!
I hope that this gets your astronomy juices flowing! There are loads more options for space activities out there, but these are the six that we don't want you to miss.
If you want more earth science experiment and activity ideas, check out our Earth Science and Astronomy Pinterest board.
If you want it all pulled together for you, check out the following our homeschool science programs with easy-to-use plans for teaching earth science:
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