Outreach for 5 year olds

[kirkster501]

Hello, 5 year old daughter is doing a two minute talk in front of her class about space and astronomy because her dad does it and that's this months theme at school! I offered to her teacher the prospect of me bringing in my telescopes to set up in the class/assembly and she eagerly accepted !!!!

So any tips about what to talk about/present/show a group of youngsters like this for 20 minutes or so - baring in mind its daytime so observation is not going to happen? I am familiar with public talking - I do it all day every day in my sales job - its any experience out there with regards to the materials to show them.

I was thinking of lots of pictures, models, what telescopes are, Galileo who first looked at Jupiter etc etc... ?

Rgds, Steve

[sologuitarist61]

You are a brave man Steve!! I wouldn't go into it too deeply because you will only lose their interest. Anything you can find that is 'cartoony' in nature always goes down well with kids 'cos you need to keep them amused. Good luck

[Hobbes]

First off - good on you! I did this a couple of years ago now at my daughters school and found the following things worked well:

Make a Star wheel - the resources are here: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/letsgo/familyfun/Make_a_Star_Wheel.html you will need to get the teacher and assistants to ride herd on the kids

Solar Observing - if the sun is about. - try and do any observing in small groups while the others make the star wheels

Daytime Lunar Observing if the moon's out and its clear. - Ditto

A pair of Binoculars on a tripod next to the class romm window - the children loved these and spent ages looking at trees, birds, other peoples houses etc.

A Story of the constellations - Perseus and the Gorgon's head is a good one as it contains loads of constellations

A star map for them to trace the constellations in the story on.

A star map for them to make their own constellations up and name them.

Leave your good lenses at home or at least don't let the children get their sticky mits on them. You will also find that some of them have very long eyelashes and tend to ram their eyes quite hard into the lens.

Hope this helps.

[knightware2]

Steve,

My kids are in college now, but I did many of these when they were younger - as early as 3 & 4!

One thing I did was demonstrate the relative size of the solar system. You need to have the spacing in mind for the room, but beyond that, this is very easy. I chose kids at random to be sun and planets. They enjoyed being called upon to participate, and they got to get up and wiggle around a bit. I even got the kids to rotate in the correct direction for their particular planet. We had a lot of fun with Uranus (rotates at 90 from the rest). I think Pluto had to step out into the hallway - this was before it got demoted to dwarf-dom.

If you have fun doing this, the kids will too. I hope all goes well!

- Phyllis

[Helen]

This is fun for the solar system scale http://solar.physics.montana.edu/tslater/plunger/tissue.htm the BBC Stargazing Live website alos has some good materials

Have Fun!

Helen

[Andy McK]

The moon, everybody can see it.

loads of information on it

they can go off and draw all the phases in a month

and explain the very important use of jaffa cakes in demonstrating the phases

Good luck

[Demo johnny]

Make a Star wheel - the resources are here: http://www.skyandtel...Star_Wheel.html you will need to get the teacher and assistants to ride herd on the kids

Brilliant!

My daughter is in brownies and son is in the cubs. So I have offered to do a stargazing session with their troops so that all the kids can get the astronomy badge. Was going to wait till end of Jan beginning of Feb to tie in with a good view of orion also try to tie in to SGL. Making the wheel will be a great thing for them to do in the build up to viewing.

I am sure the kids will love your presentation and seeing a real telescope, the stories of some of the constellations will keep their attention. Good on you.

[4lefts]

+1 for the moon. if you can time it so that the moon is up, then they'll love looking at it. things need to be immediate - look, there's the moon, this is what it's like there, here's some activities we can do. usborne's kid's picture book "on the moon" is nice (£3.39 on amazon), and if the class has an interactive whiteboard the wechoosethemoon.org is a great resource (get it buffering before you start - it takes an age to load). small groups can work on doing craters (especially good if they've been able to look at craters through a scope) - like this: http://decoyyear1.primaryblogger.co.uk/2012/01/27/the-sun-and-the-moon/ - a big tray full of flour dusted with cocoa on top, drop pleistocene meteorites from a height into it to create craters. you can make quite nice ejecta and things this way. compare to real pictures from the LRO on the whiteboard. others could start making junk model rockets from boxes and things.

be wary of time. 20 minutes is nothing with kids. it's a difficult amount of time - in some ways an hour is easier since you can really get stuck in a do and make things, whereas 20 minutes you can't, but it's too long for them to sit and listen. the star wheel is a good idea for older kids, but will take more than 20 minutes, and i'm not sure how much 5 year olds would get out of it. very few of them would be able to cut if out themselves, and very few of them can tell the time. the teacher/teaching assistant won't thank you for getting them to cut out 60 discs and join them up with split pins.

a final word about scopes - bring the cheapest eyepiece you have. they WILL put their fingers in it, even as you ask them not to. also be aware that they will have a really hard time getting their eye in the right place to see anything at all, some will get it, others will be disappointed that they can't. a nicer way (if you have the equipment) is to use a webcam and a tracking mount and put the live view onto the whiteboard. (this is what i've done for solar viewing (way safer too).) you might need a usb extension cable for this - i got one for a couple of quid off ebay and it worked fine with my webcam.

what year is your daughter in? 5 could be reception or year 1, and there's a pretty big difference.

hope this helps. let me know if i can help any more.

[4lefts]

oh, and i meant to say - good on yer.

[Siriusmeg]

You're a brave man - they are very young! The stargazing live website has some good activities which they produced on cards last year - I'm thinking particularly of the relative size of the planets using fruit (Jupiter as a watermelon, Earth as a cherry tomato etc). My astroc lub (kids aged 6-11) really enjoyed a really big picture of the Moon with some key features pointed out (e.g. Tycho, Copernicus, Apollo 11 landing site). There is a picture book called 'The sea of tranquility' which tells the story of the Moon landings - good for getting them to relate to actually being on the Moon. Keep it fairly short, active and have fun!

[J_M_Franklin]

My almost 4 year old is fascinated by The Moon, last week when we had one clear night I let here stay up to see Jupiter...to see that awe and amazement in here eyes was special indeed, I would say stick to the Moon, Venus, Mars and Jupiter because these are things the Kids can identify with the eye and the Moon...well you can't really miss the thing. These kids have a short attention span unless you peak their interest..Lucy (my little Girl) has no shut up about Jupiter, it's Moons and The Moon since last week, so if you inspire them, be prepeared to repeat the exercise...kids of this age are sponges and absorb any information that they find interesting, and that is the key...

[breezy]

Don't show fear , they can smell it a mile off and you can bet one of them will come up with a question from total left field , I have done school visits for work .... Be afraid be very afraid cos in the classroom no one can hear you scream

[RikM]

I did a couple of talks for Cubs and Brownies, so a bit older than 5 but I used Stellarium on a beamer and did a little planetarium show. How to find the pole star using the pointers and how to find the Pleiades using the stars in Orion's belt. I just use the telescope as a prop really.