Resource: Exploring Creation through Astronomy by Jeanie Fulbright
We first explored Astronomy with this resource when my children were 3rd grade, 1st grade and preschool. The 3rd grader devoured the material and thoroughly enjoyed all the activities. The younger two listened to the read aloud lessons - then drew pictures or acted out the things they had learned.
My oldest child loved this so much she ask if we could do the whole book again. So we are! This year my students are 6th grade, 4th grade, 1st grade and newborn.
We have planned out two days a week to do this. We may take longer than one semester to complete it. And that's fine with me - because I don't count semesters anyway.
Each lesson is laid out with a section to read, then a "What do you remember?" part with suggestions for discussion questions. It also includes activities and projects and notebooking ideas. There are lots of suggestions, and no way we could do all of them. So I let my children pick the ones that sound exciting to them. We are creating an Astronomy notebook as a family. Each child contributes to it, with the older children having more detailed and elaborate contributions than the younger.
It is set up so that each lesson can be easily done in about two weeks - depending on the age of the students. We tend to spend a little more time on things - and sometimes skip around. So in my house the 6th grader may be reading about and talking to the younger siblings about lesson 10 (Saturn) while I am reading lesson 3 (Mercury) to them. The 1st grader may be making a model of the solar system, while the 4th grader is building a model space ship out of K'nex that will take them all to Pluto.
It is Christian material - teaching in the very first lesson that God created the universe in 6 days. It is very economical, with each book being about $35 at the time of this writing. You need only one book for all of your students, and most of the activities can be done with items you probably have in your home. (There is a list broken down by lesson in the front of the book.)
We completely love this material, and will move on to the Flying Creatures, Swimming Creatures, and Land Animals soon. It gets four thumbs up from us! (that's one from each child using the material plus Mom.)
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