Monday, March 21, 2016
10:00 - 12:00; 120 min.
Enrichment
‘Animalia’, by Graeme Base -
Analise and I read the book ‘Animalia’, by Graeme Base. This book provides one illustration for each letter of the alphabet. For each letter, the beautiful illustration contains numerous items, all beginning with the specific letter. Also each page has a boy hiding in amongst the many items. Analise and I examined each page, finding the different items and saying the word associated with the letter. She searched for the boy and in the process, practiced saying words starting with the letter. We spent the rest of the time making our own alphabet pages, drawing whatever we could think of that started with the letter A or B.

We completed his daily morning meeting that practices spelling, handwriting, and days/months/weather patterns. next, Stephen completed a reading comprehension assignment on Wetlands and took notes. He completed a great amount of work during class today.

Bobby participated at a school-wide event this afternoon.

Bobby finished his galaxy poster today. And a fine job it was. He still had the labels of the various portrayed objects to glue onto the poster, and as I laid them out on the table (he had prepared them in our last class) Bobby remembered so well which object was which. This was not a requirement, for I'm more concerned with the underlying science, but it was amazing to see what an excellent memory Bobby has with respect to these astronomical objects (he also remembered the names of the nebulae when we worked on his previous project).

Gwendolyn finished her Solar System project on the relative sizes of our planets. She had used real images for templates, and her work (primarily undertaken with fingerpaints) is very good! We cut the planets out, and glued them onto a black background. While gluing, I quizzed Gwendolyn on the order of the planets from the Sun, and she knew exactly which planet is where, and also which is the smallest and which is the largest planet.

Bobby is almost finished with his galaxy poster. We printed the remaining figure captions, primarily the names of the objects portrayed. While gluing the photos and captions onto the background, I quizzed Bobby on various astronomical subjects. We reviewed the different galaxy types to begin with. When I asked Bobby to name the planets in the Solar System, not only did he know them by heart, but he also knew in which order they are from the Sun. We also discussed the difference between asteroids and meteors, and then between meteors, meteorites, and meteoroids.

Bobby worked on the figure captions for his galaxy poster today. We also talked about the construction of reflecting telescopes. The general setup is the same for all reflectors, regardless of mirror size. A primary mirror (a paraboloid) collects the light from the emitting object, and, since these objects are at large distances, the rays can be considered to be parallel. When they hit the primary mirror, the rays are focused toward a secondary mirror. The main purpose of the primary mirror is to collect light, and the secondary mirror then focuses the rays into an eyepiece or detectors. The diameters of portable amateur telescopes range from a few inches to around 20 inches - larger than that makes them difficult to transport, while the diameters of the largest ground-based optical telescopes are currently of the order 24 - 30 feet or so.

Stephen worked through his morning meeting, practicing spelling and handwriting as he copied the board info. Next, he created flash cards to correspond with the words from yesterday's lesson on Food Chains and Food Webs. The final six minutes were spent watching a recap video of food chains and webs.

In continuing with Gwendolyn's project on the planets of the Solar System to scale, today she worked on Saturn and the Earth. I can tell that Gwendolyn really likes colors! She's almost done with Saturn, today she painted in the various atmospheric bands, and she wanted to complete Earth after painting in the oceans, but the paint needs to dry properly. We'll continue next week.

Today we finished gathering all the visual material for Bobby's galaxy poster. He now has a nice collection of spiral galaxies, ellipticals, barred spirals, and irregulars. For the irregulars, we found nice images of the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds, the Milky Way's closest neighbors - in fact, they are satellite galaxies. Bobby also has an image of M31, or Andromeda, the nearest full-size galaxy. In fact, the Milky Way and Andromeda are on a collision course, and will crash into each other in about 2.5 billion years. The examples Bobby has of galaxy collisions show what may happen to us. Bobby worked very hard again today.