Interactive activities in the planetarium

[jnb]

We have increased our outreach with our mobile planetarium a lot this year (1800 people saw the planetarium in the first month of 2017 alone) and feedback is generally very good. One piece of feedback we received recently was that the teacher wanted to see "more interactive activities for the pupils." We usually do a presentation in the planetarium and then a Q&A session afterwards with activities which tend to be based around getting students to model the planets, gravitational collapse of a star etc. So the interactive section is ad hoc and directed by the students questions.

What sort of structured interactive activities might we do in the planetarium? I can create supporting lesson plans for teachers and suggestions of activity sheets but what could we do rather than delegate to the teachers for later activities?

[johnfosteruk]

I've just started out with a school outreach program and I think the resources at Universe Awareness are brilliant

For example 'as the world turns' - Night/day demonstration showing that the world's not static and the daily transition from shadow to light. Take a Paper plate, draw a line to divide it in half. The kids draw a nighttime scene one side and a daytime scene on the other.

Fasten half a paper plate on top and turn it. Then ask

• If it's night time here, what is happening on the other side of the world?  
• What happens every 24 hours?
• Where does the daylight come from?
• Why isn't the Sun in the sky during the night?
• Why do day and night happen?

No doubt you'll be able to augment it (and most of the activities) with the planetarium.