Asteroid Strike Basketball

So, this week at Bayside was a little difficult. Only two our kids were there...so we had to quickly rethink our plan for the day. I think it's become clear to all three of us that our daily sunspot project is not something they plan to do on their own everyday and that's fine. We've just been taking some time at the beginning of each week and having them record all of the data they missed. Thankfully that website keeps an archive!!

David and Gadiel were much more entertained by the stickers we bought them to decorate their folders than anything we planned to talk about, so we kept it simple. Our goal was to get them to think about planetary rotation, so we brought them outside to the basketball court. Lorenzo grabbed a basketball and acting as the Earth, orbiting around me - the sun - by following the painted circle at the top of the key. David actually came up with the fact that Earth must spin as it orbits in order for us to have night and day. We also brought up the belief that the earthquake in Chile has tilted our axis more...I'm not too sure that caught on, though.

Their attention spans died pretty quick, so we turned our science lesson into an asteroid strike with a basketball. We all took turns trying to hit the Earth with asteroids. David was constantly asking me what planet we could try to hit next.

You know, they might not have learned too much concrete science this week, but they had fun and that's important.