Welcome to our homeschool astronomy presentation! I hope you are sitting comfortably and are ready for the journey of your life…
This was one of my most favourite presentations! The children were about seven at the time. We had just finished Apologia Astronomy curriculum. It had given us a taste of just how exciting homeschool had the potential to be. The children, Gary and I headed up to the London Natural History Museum, where we spent hours enjoying the astronomy department. And it was here we came up with lots of lovely ideas for our end of year homeschool astronomy presentation.
Our Homeschool Astronomy Presentation:
The guests
Generally speaking, one of the children’s favourite things about homeschool presentations is the people they get to invite. As this was one of our earlier ones and we had not quite ventured out past the family. So, for this presentation my mum, my brother and his girlfriend attended:
The Landing on the Moon Play
The children wrote a short play about man’s first landing on the moon. They insisted they needed a large spaceship. It needed to fit the three of them into it and yet also needed to fit into our living room. So not asking much…she says sarcastically 🤨
But, I am a creative genius, and soon came up with the masterful idea of covering the outdoors climbing frame in foil and bringing it inside. Not that masterful, as it turned out. Having wrapped it in foil, it was nearby impossible to then bring it inside. Plan B. Strip climbing frame of foil, bring it inside and then cover it in foil.
The children were chuffed, it was perfect. Gary was less so, claiming he needed to take out shares in aluminium foil in an attempt to prevent our imminent bankruptcy!
Bankruptcy aside, it was pretty cool:
We also used up too many black bags to count (although we did use these after so no threatened bankruptcy ensued regarding the bags!) to make the room as dark as possible.
The play was the first thing on the agenda. They all did really well and the spacecraft was suitably shiny:
Space Food
Every presentation we try to make themed food. As our presentations are, on the whole, history based ones, this does not present much difficulty. Space food was another thing altogether! It didn’t look very appetising…
Firstly, I had to figure out how to keep the food and food containers from floating about in the (pretend) zero gravity. I used a large foil tray, onto which I could add the food containers and drinks. Using two bags, I placed strawberry mouse in one and orange squash in the other. I popped a straw into each bag and taped it in place whilst fastening the bag firmly shut. The children stuck magnetic strips to the bottom of the bags so that they would stick on the tray.
Next, I added some magnetic strips to two smaller foil containers and filled one with hot macaroni cheese and the other with a tortilla.
Lastly, I added a magnetic stripped dehydrated ice cream. This was ‘proper’ space food we had bought when we were at the museum and which added a bit of (much needed) authenticity:
It wasn’t the most visually pleasing meal…and I have to say, it didn’t taste good either! For the first time ever I understood what ‘eating with your eyes‘ meant. It looked gross and therefore tasted gross.
Thomas’ Presentation: Man’s First Landing on the Moon
Thomas did his presentation on man’s first landing on the moon. He created a presentation board with lots of information, diagrams and pictures. His presentation board was placed on top of a large astronomy puzzle showing all the planets. He also made a model of Apollo 11 and a moon diorama:
As part of his presentation he made a diorama of the moon:
I know he’s my son but, seriously, this was so cool. The moon is made of talcum powder, and I think he flicked some on the black paper as stars out in the sky.
Thomas gave a talk and then demonstrated, using a space rocket he made himself, how each section was rejected and burnt up in the atmosphere as it was no longer needed:
Charlotte’s Presentation: Jupiter
Charlotte chose Jupiter to do her presentation on. She was a tour guide giving us a pretend tour around Jupiter’s atmosphere:
After, she did a demonstration of a storm in a bottle, to represent the raging storms on Jupiter’s surface:
Lillie’s Presentation: Is Pluto a Planet, a Kuiper belt Object…or a Dog
Lillie would be our most competent (and quietly confident speaker). She and Gary came up with a presentation entitled Pluto: a planet or a dog? She did really well with the humour but also managed to make the talk factual and informative, discussing whether Pluto should be reinstated as a planet:
After she had finished, Rob and Granny asked each child some questions, pertinent to their chosen subject. They then critiqued the children, giving them strengths and weaknesses so they know where they need to improve next time.
Presentations are such a key conclusion to any study and they are so much fun to put on!