I subbed for Charlie for science/math enrichment. I brought in a simple microscope I have and we looked at some slides of bugs. I also brought in a magnet game. He mastered it very quickly. Charlie enjoyed both. He had a new Lego set that he was very excited to share with me. He wanted to show me how he could put it together. Since it was science enrichment I told him we first both had to predict how long it would take him. This is what scientists do first. Then we had to find a way to time him so that we could get an actual result. We used the timer on his phone. It took him longer than both of us predicted :). I told him if we had the opportunity again in the future he could try to beat his time. We spent the last 10 minutes in the computer lab, he showed me some of the math enrichment games available since I have not had a chance to see those yet.

Bobby finally completed his nebula poster! He was so thrilled, and was rather eager to show to the poster to some people, including, of course, Judie. Bobby did a fantastic job with this project, and I know he's already looking forward to the next one.

We started on Gwendolyn's project today on the scale of the planets. Gwendolyn first drew circles representing each of the planets to scale: Jupiter, being the largest planet, had a scaled diameter of around 12 inches; on this scale, the Earth was only about 1 inch in diameter. The idea now is to paint the planets using real images as templates.

We're almost done with Bobby's poster! We had a series of technical snags today, but I want to emphasize that Bobby was so incredibly patient. In the end, we managed to print some text out, so Bobby was finally able to finalize the layout of his poster. He spent the last fifteen minutes gluing the images of the three types of nebula in their respective groupings, along with the associated text. He appeared to be very happy with his work, and so he should be - it looks very neat, and is informative. He still only needs to glue the labels with the names of the objects, I'm hoping to print these out for him as soon as possible.

I was so proud of Bobby several times today. First of all, Bobby explained to Jared (who I taught high school astronomy last year) what the three main types of nebulae are - he was so happy to share his knowledge and described the nebulae very well. Next, we discussed not only nebulae but also galaxies with Ms Theresa, and Bobby remembered things we talked about ages ago regarding galaxies (Hubble's 'tuning fork' classification of galaxies, supermassive black holes at their centers, etc). Finally, Bobby concentrated on writing the final text for his nebula poster, despite the fact that his friends were involved in extracurricular activities - he only modestly asked if he could spend the last ten minutes playing chess. What a model student!

After we finally finished the 3D model of Ursa Major, I thought it might be fun to move onto the planets again, especially since Gwendolyn has been working on certain aspects of planets with Ms Theresa. My idea is to construct a model of the Solar System, but this time based on relative sizes instead of distances. It's going to be a 2D model, so we need to draw circles. With the help of a compass, Gwendolyn started practicing drawing circles. I took the opportunity to tell her a bit about circle geometry — i.e. diameters, radii, circumferences, area.

Dr. Barbara demonstrated a van de Graaff generator and thereby introduced a handful of students to the wonders of the physics of static electricity. She showed the behavior of different objects (e.g. Barbie doll, metallic ribbon, Rice Krispies) when in contact with the primary positive charge collector. The students were enthralled, and learned a lot on the behavior of positive and negative charges.

Bobby was so eager to get back to work on his nebula poster! Now we have all the images that will be included, so today we started writing the accompanying text. Bobby had done a great job of keeping notes of the nebulae that we've been printing out these past few weeks, so we referred to those. There were some that we weren't sure of, so we used our online resources to confirm the names of these objects. As we were searching, I absent-mindedly said we should look for 'star-forming nebulae' and Bobby immediately noticed that the object whose name we were looking for was, in fact, a reflection nebula! Well done, Bobby.

Reviewed plant growth and how they react to their environment and gravity. Also spent a few minutes getting to know Ethan's interests since this was our first session together.

Today we were supposed to finalize the 3D model of Ursa Major, or The Big Dipper, but we had some technical problems. Nevertheless, while tackling the model, Gwendolyn and I discussed further the idea behind constellations, the fact that stars are not all in the same plane – they just appear that way, and that patience is always a good thing when doing science ... and Gwendolyn is, indeed, very patient. We finished by talking about the visible features on the surfaces of planets, i.e. for example the 'bands' on Jupiter that arise from different atmospheric phenomena (mainly, winds in the upper clouds).