On the first Saturday of every month we post educational skywatching notes for the homeschool month ahead. Follow along with us to enlarge your students’ understanding of science and the universe. (And maybe yours too!)
Here is this month’s five-minute northern hemisphere night-sky review from the Hubble Space Telescope’s website — it features June constellations, including our term-namesake, Hercules. Open it up on a large screen for your students to watch:
And here’s another June night-sky review, courtesy of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California — it features June planets, the June solstice (see below), and our monthly Great Star, Spica:
One of the easiest astronomical exercises you and your students can do each month is print out your own copy of the current two-page Evening Sky Map and monthly sky calendar available from skymaps.com:
- ➢ Evening Sky Maps – Northern Hemisphere Edition (updated monthly)
Each map includes a constellation chart for the month as well as a schedule of upcoming astronomical events and an astronomical glossary. (Monthly maps for the southern hemisphere and the equatorial regions are also available.) Give a copy to your students and ask them to study it and report back to you on three notable things you can watch for this month. (And as they report to you, ask them questions about what they’re telling you.) Do that for a few minutes each month, and before you know it you’ll have a team of expert astronomers in your homeschool.
The best stargazing nights this June will be toward the middle of the month: the moon will be new (and the sky darkest) on the 18th. As always, you can look up the moon’s phases in your River Houses almanac and also on the timeanddate.com website. 🌑 🌓 🌕 🌗 🌑
June is the first month of Hercules Term, our spring term in the River Houses. Our Great Star for the month of June is the brilliant blue giant Spica (alpha Virginis), which we’ll be writing about next week. Print your own River Houses Star Calendar and follow along with us through the year as we learn about twelve of the high lights of the northern hemisphere night sky. 🌟
June is also the month of the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere — the astronomical beginning of summer — which falls this year on Wednesday the 21st. (In the southern hemisphere the 21st will be the winter solstice — the astronomical beginning of winter.) The summer solstice is the “longest day” of the year: the day with the longest period of daylight and the shortest period of darkness. 🏙 🌃 🏙
What celestial sights and aerial apparitions will you and your young astronomers be examining during this homeschool June? 🔭
❡ All the star-sown sky: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. Our recommended backyard star guide and homeschool world atlas both contain charts of the constellations that will help you learn your way around the heavens. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time with your students beneath the starry vault. ✨
❡ The starry archipelagoes: For a great weekly astronomical essay, perfect for older homeschoolers, pay a visit to “The Sky This Week” from the U.S. Naval Observatory. These well-written pages, posted each Tuesday, usually focus on one or two special astronomical events or phenomena. If you have high school science students, have them read these pages aloud to you each week, or ask them to study them and narrate a summary back to you. 🌌
❡ Make friendship with the stars: This is one of our regular Homeschool Astronomy posts. Add your name to our free River Houses mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🗞
❡ Homeschool calendars: We have a whole collection of free, printable, educational homeschool calendars and planners available on our main River Houses calendar page. They will all help you create a light and easy structure for your homeschool year. Give them a try today! 🗓
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