Ideas for a school eclipse talk / show n tell

[FenlandPaul]

Hi everyone

I seem to have volunteered / been volunteered to go along to my son's primary school on eclipse morning and give a talk / show them the eclipse. He is in Year 2 (his class is 5 to 7 year olds) and I've been given a free reign really. Now I'm generally fine speaking in front of a room full of investors or colleagues, but the thought of getting in front of 30 bright, energetic and very inquisitive kids both enthrals and terrifies me! I'm looking for some ideas for how to keep them entertained and how best to explain what's going on to them. Thoughts I've had thus far include:

-- I'm going to try to get them all eclipse glasses. It's quite an outlay - struggling to find them at less than £2.10 a pair - but I think it would be nice for them to all have something to take away with them. If anyone knows somewhere that can do a job lot (say 30) for a good price, please let me know. A straw poll here suggests the kids would prefer to see the Sun as orange / yellow, rather than Baader blue-white!

-- I plan to use a beach ball / tennis ball / football or something like that to do an audience-participative explanation of what an eclipse is. If anyone knows any good youtube demonstrations, please can you let me know? Would quite like to mimic them!

-- Might do a little bit on how the Sun works - cue Patrick Moore's "but don't worry, there's plenty of Sun left" comment!

-- Will encourage them all to bring colanders from home to try out the pinhole-camera style viewing. I saw this was in this month's Sky at Night magazine - never tried it myself but sounds like a fun trick.

-- Will set up my 12" dob solely for them to see and go "wow"; but it won't be used for viewing. Eclipse viewing would be through my 20x80 bins with Baader filter and possibly a Skymax 127 that I'm considering getting. Clearly I'd need to make sure filters are gaffer-taped in place and finders are removed etc. Any other safety concerns you can foresee PLEASE SHOUT!!!!!

-- Would probably try to get the kids who are there early to sketch what they see at early-eclipse and then again at mid-eclipse.

Does anyone have any other ideas / links to useful resources / links to cheap (but sound) eclipse glasses?

Thanks in advance everyone.

Paul

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Siriusmeg]

These sound like great ideas - planning on doing something similar myself

I haven't yet found a source of cheap glasses - will let you know if anything turns up  

[Helen]

I'm working up some resources for schools this week, so will stick that stuff up when done.

For eclipse glasses try sales@3dimages.co.uk that's the company that did the sky at night ones.

Helen

[nicks90]

how about picking up a cheap frac and doing solar projection on to a large white piece of card, so many can see it at once?

[bingevader]

I'm hoping to do the same (with Helen's resources).

Your ideas sound great.

We're planning on using strips of Baader film mounted in between and in the middle of 2 sheets of A4 card.

I reckon I can get 12 strips comfortably, 14 if I'm mean with the width of the strips, out of an £18, A4 sheet (£1.50 or £1.30 a strip).

We're only planning on taking small groups out at a time however with plenty of supervision.

I've made a few pin hole cameras out of the boxes the A4 paper comes in, but the resulting image of the sun is rather small.

Fortunately, I have a white light solar filter for the etx, but I'm hoping to use some of the Baader film to make a filter for the stopping down cap in the end cap of the 8" dob too.

[Siriusmeg]

The Charlie Bates Solar astronomy project gave us lots of solar glasses at the IAS last year as we told them about our group's solar observing events.  They don't sell them on their website but might be able to help if you contact them.  Really nice people