Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-dark-sky
This is International Dark Sky Week! That makes it a perfect week to encourage your young scholars to appreciate the night sky — if they don’t already (and we hope they do).
The night sky is one thing that all humanity shares. Although the constellations may differ from northern hemisphere to southern hemisphere, the night sky’s behavior is common to us all — the rising and setting of the stars, the passage of the planets, the regular meteor showers, the phases of the moon, and on and on.
Here’s a magnificent one-minute video of the night sky all around the world, released for this year’s International Dark Sky Week by NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day website. Why not share it this week with your students:
The video features night-sky scenes from the United States, Germany, Russia, Iran, Nepal, Thailand, Laos, China, and Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean.
What celestial sights and astronomical apparitions have you been examining in your homeschool this Leo Term? 🔭
❡ Choose something like a star: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. Your recommended backyard star guide and homeschool world atlas (riverhouses.org/books) both contain charts of the constellations that will show you the all the highlights. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌌
❡ Star bright: If you’d like some light and easy homeschool astronomy lessons, download and print a copy of our annual River Houses Star Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us month by month as we make twelve heavenly friends-for-life over the course of the year. 🌟
❡ Watchers of the skies: This is one of our regular Homeschool Astronomy posts. Add your name to our River Houses mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🔭
