What is the sun? What are stars made from?
We read through a variety of non-fiction books from the library to research the answers to these questions... The sun is the star around which the planets of our solar system orbit. F cleverly commented from this, "Does that mean that if there were planets going around other stars, they would be like the sun for those planets?" 😍👍
Stars are made from lots and lots of tiny pieces of dust and gas hitting against each other, and every time they do they create heat and light (a nuclear reaction!). 💥 I needed to briefly explain what I meant by a "gas" (it's like air; it's all around us and we breathe it in and out... like when we boil water and you see the steam coming up, that's the water changing into a gas... They seemed to grasp the basics but changes of state is now a topic I want to cover soon with them, insha'Allah!) but they seemed to get the idea of it.
To help demonstrate, I took out a box of matches (quick recap on fire safety with them). When I hit the match head against the box, it made fire: heat and light. A similar thing is happening inside a star, except lots and lots of tiny reactions are happening all at the same time. (The girls then had fun taking it in turns to blow out the matches I struck 😂)
Stars grow old and die when all the nuclear reactions are finished - similar to the matches, once it's been used, can it be used again? No! (We tried one to make sure!) So one day the sun will burn out, too... When? Scientists have predicted it to happen a long long long time after our lifetimes (billions of years from now!). The book we were reading explained what would happen to the Earth if there was no more sun - everything would die because it would be too cold - so I asked the girls if they wanted to be alive to see that happen... One said yes, the other said no! Then the conversation moved to talking about the Day of Judgement, because maybe that would happen before the sun burnt out anyway; only Allah knows.
What's the difference between an asteroid and a comet? What is a meteor?
We read through this brilliant find from the library: Our Solar System - Asteroids, Comets and Meteors to learn about these smaller objects found in space. After reading it together, taking it in turns to read paragraphs, captions and fact boxes, I wrote the keywords on the whiteboard: asteroids, comets, meteors, meteoroids, meteorite. Then I asked the girls to tell me what each one meant, i.e. give a definition. If they couldn't remember exactly, what could they do? M said to look in the glossary. 👌 And if they wanted even more detail? She said they could just go back and read the pages in the book again!
So the definitions we came up with were:
asteroid: made from rock and metal; orbits the sun
comet: made from rock, dust and ice; orbits the sun
meteoroid: piece of asteroid or comet
meteor: the streak of light made by a meteoroid burning up in the Earth's atmosphere
meteorite: a meteoroid when it hits the Earth
I learnt something new, too, as I didn't know the difference between any of them! Then I made a simple diagram of this information for them to fill in the blanks as a worksheet.
You can download our worksheet here.
The purpose of this exercise was to highlight how useful diagrams can be as opposed to blocks of text, rather than getting them to memorise the definitions for asteroid/comet/meteoroid/etc.
Why are diagrams useful? Because pictures can help us understand things quicker and/or easier! Which kind of fact book would they prefer to read: one with diagrams or one without? Why? Then I asked them to find me an example of an effective diagram (one which they liked because it was clear and helped them to understand something easily) from one of the non-fiction books we had taken out from the library.
Finally, we followed the instructions in the back of the book to make our own comets from foil and ribbon. Z made one too, with my help. After they threw them around a bit, I got them to climb onto the sofa (climb into space!) and throw their comets down to try and hit a cushion on the floor. Whenever they got a hit, we all cheered, "You made a crater!" - to reinforce that the impact from a meteoroid hitting the Earth makes a big dent in the ground. 😁
Later on, I found them throwing their comets down the stairs. 😂
No comments:
Post a Comment