Exploring Space: Builder Boy's Discovery, the Wall, and the Logbook

Tuesday, the day after our late night sky gazing, I was really tired. A loud something or other woke me up at 5:30 in the morning and I had trouble getting back to sleep. I wasn't feeling so good pregnancy-wise, either, so when the late afternoon came and we still hadn't started Space School, I decided I needed the day off. That didn't stop Builder Boy, however, from learning.

Early in the afternoon he started making "books;" drawing pictures of space objects and labeling them with some spelling help from me.  Then he made a book about stars and drew different diagrams of the sun and the Earth, showing the orbit, what sunrise and sunset looks like from Earth, etc. His last picture was of the sun's job in the water cycle. He talked to me about it and made the point that without the sun there would be no evaporation, no redistribution of water through clouds, and eventually all the water would be accumulate in the oceans and that would be that. I was really proud of him for thinking of that, which applied to what we were talking about on Day 4.


Today I continued to feel run down, so we just reviewed what we already knew and took down all the papers we had put up on The Learning Wall. We had filled up The Wall and we are only half way though Exploring Space. The Evan Moor Scienceworks for Kids books are set up to turn the workbook pages into a logbook, so that's what we did today. The "_________'s Space Logbook" pages I pasted on the front and back of a three prong folder ("duotangs," to my Canadian friends.) Most of the pages we did actually turn into mini books, so those went in the folder pockets. I want the space books Builder Boy made on his own with these as well, so those went in the back pocket. We will fill our Learning Wall with the rest of the pages before putting them in our book. There's just something more satisfying seeing it fill up The Wall than just adding pages to the logbook, a few at a time. We're leaving the solar system picture, the verse, song, and Builder Boy's extra drawing on The Wall.

I feel a little said about something I found out today. A few weeks back Builder Boy discovered a chart in the back of the, unfortunately outdated, Magic School Bus Lost in the Solar System book. In the chart it had the current (at the time of printing) number of moons per planet, and Builder Boy all on his own memorized the number for each planet. Well, I looked it up today, and there have been many more moons discovered since that book was printed. And there are varying reports on how many each have, as some still need to be verified. Right now Builder Boy thinks that Saturn has more moons than Jupiter, with Jupiter having 16 and Saturn having 17. But my Googling says that they both have over 60, and Jupiter has a few more than Saturn. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a source that will give enough specifics to make a new chart for him. This feels like "Pluto isn't a planet anymore" all over again.

I've got an afternoon doctor's appointment tomorrow and out of town visitors in the evening, so I hope I can get my pregnant butt in gear and move on soon to our next concept.

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