Astronomy Notebook

We've been doing Jeanie Fulbright's Exploring Creation through Astronomy this year and we're really enjoying this wonderful book. I love how CM it is! She tells her lessons from a scientific, yet Biblical, viewpoint and even has places for you to ask for narration and notebook lessons. It's been a perfect addition to our homeschool and I wanted to share a few of our most recent pictures with you.

The first project Jeanie has you do is create a cover for your Astronomy notebook. Dd7 decided to draw a picture of the Earth with a satellite above it. We've been studying satellites and what they are. I had no idea that the Earth is actually a satellite of the sun, as are all of the planets. A satellite is anything that rotates around another object in space. Some satellites are man-made but some are natural satellites! See, I'm learning new things everyday. The other night my ds5 looked up at the moon in the night sky and said, "look Mom! It's a satellite!"

The next picture is a picture dd7 drew of the sun. Our first lesson is all about the sun and it's amazing qualities. We've learned just how big the sun actually is. Thousands of Earths can fit inside our sun. She's reading a book about the solar system right now and she pointed out a picture to me inside the book. She said, "Mom, this picture is not right." At first I didn't understand what she was talking about. She then pointed out that the sun was not drawn to scale. This book only shows the sun as about four times the size of Earth. Smart child! This picture below is a picture of the sun complete with sun spots and a sun flare. I didn't ask her to draw the specific items in her pictures. I simply asked her to draw a picture based on what we've been learning. I then asked her to write a few sentences about the sun as a narration for her picture. That picture is below as well.

Next week we'll be studying Mercury. She's already devouring the library books we checked out yesterday on this subject. I have a feeling she'll know more about Mercury than I will by the time we get to it!

Jill