Have you gotten your FREE Summer Unit Study Planner? I’ve been hard at work with mine, laying out plans for an Astronomy unit study and a Pirates/Maritime History unit study for the family this summer. I’ve put quite a bit of time into gathering resources and planning activities because I enjoy it. We don’t get much for family vacations and holidays around here with the farm to keep an eye on. So we have to make up our own, local, staycation-type fun for the summer.

I’m going to share my resource list and plans for our family space study with you, along with some tips on how to find field trips and activities in your area. You could put together a fun unit study for your family by choosing even just one or two of the resources below for your family to enjoy together!

Space is not a topic we’ve covered in the past very much. One of the reasons I picked Astronomy for this year is because there are a bunch of special astronomical events happening over the summer months that will be visible for us with the unaided eye. Between May and August, there will be 3 meteor showers, 2 eclipses (one is even a TOTAL eclipse!), 4 complete moon cycles to observe, and 3 visible planets (Mercury, Venus, and Saturn)!

Here’s our outline, which will be spread out from May to August…

Please note: Normally our unit studies start with a fiction book or series for read-alouds. I struggled at first to find something I thought would work for us! But after a lot of research, I have a post on space fiction picks coming up later this week!

Family Movie Night

To celebrate Star Wars Day (May 4th) and National Space Day (May 5th) we’re going to watch Rogue One for Family Movie Night and add some Star Wars inspired food (you’ll find lots of ideas on our StarGazing Board!).

A couple other movies I’ve picked up or borrowed for enjoying throughout the summer include Hidden Figures, The Martian, Apollo 13, Space Cowboys, and October Sky. I tried really hard to find a copy of that old Kate Capshaw movie Space Camp, but even used ones are very expensive. I don’t like to pay more than $5 for movies, I’m cheap that way!

Observation Journals

I picked up some 5×7 composition books for the kids to do some journaling. They’ll write some observation notes when we’re out star-gazing. Any printable resources I find can be printed at 50% to glue in. They’ll also be able to add field trip notes and pictures. (If you’re using our Family Unit Study Planner, you could print the Field Trip Notes and Reading/Watching Notes at whatever size you need and glue them in.)

I printed this FREE monthly moon journal for May-Aug and inserted it for them. You could also use this FREE Moon Phases Mini Book independently or in conjunction with your journal. We’re going to print it out and glue it into our books as we review the phases. If you don’t want to make your own journals, you could just use the FREE Night Sky Journal from Fantastic Fun and Learning.

Star Gazing and Observation

We’ll be spending evenings all summer star-gazing and working on learning different constellations and record what we see in our journals. This FREE Stargazing Scavenger Hunt is a very simple observation guide for beginners.

To help us id them, I’ve put posters up around the playroom of constellations (I highly recommend The Stars–it’s the clearest one I found for beginners!), phases of the moon, and the solar system. The images catch the kids’ eyes every time they walk by! Hint: A good place to look for maps and posters are in stacks of old National Geographic magazines! Then we bought glow-in-the-dark stars to stick on the ceilings in the playroom as we learn the constellation patterns.

We’ll use either these FREE Constellation Cards or these FREE Constellation Flash Cards in our journals.  And we’ll probably build constellations out of marshmallows and toothpicks. That seems like a lot of fun and you eat all the mess afterward–win! We also have the Usborne 100 Things to Spot in the Night Sky and there’s a bunch of hands-on activities in the book Constellations for Every Kid that we might try.

The Solar System

The moon, planets, sun, stars, galaxies, asteroids, meteors…Since this is a new topic for us, I just wanted to hit the basics of how everything fits together. I was really excited to find that there are a lot of FREE space documentaries available with Amazon Prime (Try Amazon Prime 30-Day Free Trial) because this stuff could be pretty dry if we had to read a textbook for it!

As background, I’ve add several FREE Prime shows and movies into their WatchList for their Tablets, including Our Solar System (simple 40-minute overview, a little dry) and Wonders of Creation–the Milky Way and Our Solar System. We’ll also be watching episodes of Ready Jet Go. If you’re a fan of Wild Kratts, you’ll like this series too, but it’s geared toward younger astronomers. (My two older kids won’t admit that they like it too, but they do!)

We’ll also be printing these amazing FREE Solar System Cards and Universe Cards from Research Parent to add to our notebooks. And I found some space sticker books and coloring books for the kids to enjoy while we do read-aloud time or on car trips.

A couple non-fiction solar system books on our shelves include:

• Space: a Visual Encyclopedia (we got it used at a library sale!)
• DK Eyewitness Universe and Astronomy (used at a thrift store, a little rough but intact)
• Big Book of Earth and Sky (Ah-Maz-Ing)
• Scholastic Children’s Astronomy books (from a homeschooling neighbor who was cleaning out their shelves!)
• Backyard Guide to the Night Sky (library was able to get me this one)
• A Skywatchers Year (used from Amazon, very inexpensive)

 

Space Exploration

Since engineering, computer science, and robotics have become so important in our world, I wanted to make sure to hit on the history and technology of space exploration. Who doesn’t like rockets and robots, right? Turns out, a lot of other people feel the same way because there are TONS of resources out there! {smile}

First and foremost, NASA has pages and pages of resources you could tap into. I’ve bookmarked their Kid’s Club page for the crew to explore at their leisure. I’ve also added the FREE Prime series NASA: A Journey Thru Space which will walk them through the basics of space exploration history in a simple and organized way. In addition, the series Trajectory: Milestones in Space Exploration is FREE with Prime. It focuses more specifically on individual missions and technologies. I don’t think my whole crew will want to watch all of that one, but the Cowboy will.

If you don’t have Prime then you could check out the 2-part PBS documentary Space Station for FREE on their website, along with their series A Year in Space and their educational series Space Time on YouTube–we might use a little of both of these as well.

We’re also going to:

• Make a rocket/space shuttle out of cardboard
• Make a space shuttle out of a soda bottle
• Eat astronaut food
• Make our own space robots from kits we got the kids at Christmas

 

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Field Trips and Extras

We’ve renewed our membership at the Virginia Living Museum for the year so we’ll be catching a few of their planetarium shows and taking part in their Star Party events over the summer.

You can also visit Go Astronomy and search their directory for a local astronomy club in your area that might be planning events. I also found their Observation Events calendar to be one of the easiest to understand.

Another idea would be to check with your local aquarium, botanical gardens, public library and natural science museum for star-gazing events over the summer. The fun thing about astronomy is that you can study it no matter where you are, so we’ll be able to do our observations whether we’re home, camping, visiting family, or out-of-town.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I struggled at first to come up with a fiction selection for this unit. I’ll share more about what I finally picked later this week!

Remember to Keep it Simple and Fun! 

Book + Movie + Field trip (on the same topic) = Unit Study! 

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