You'll Be Signing Up for Tours, Once You Read Our Brochures!

Hop onboard for a trip that's out of this world! Take a trip to Mercury
where the drastic change in temperature allows you to bake cookies with no oven during the day and make popsicles with no freezer at night! Or how about a little vacay on Venus, named after the goddess of love? Stick around on old, faithful Earth and breathe in the only fresh air in the Solar System or jet off to Mars and climb the tallest volcano known to man! Are you a daredevil? Visit Jupiter's Red Spot, a hurricane bigger than the Earth! Perhaps you prefer something a little more relaxing? Well, slip over to Saturn and kick back while you admire its 10,000 rings! Tired of the same old rotation of the Earth? On Uranus you will experience a sideways rotation found on no other planet!!! Schedule a trip to Neptune and knock years off your age...really! One year on Neptune is 165 Earth years! Too busy to exercise? Lift off to Pluto where a 100 pound person only weighs 8 pounds...no cardio necessary! This information and more, can be found in a planet brochure!

New Space Discoveries!

If we've learned anything during our study of the Solar System, it's that things are always changing. The Universe is expanding, Pluto is now a dwarf planet, and just this week a new Earth-like planet has been discovered just a mere 500 light years away! That's only about 3000 trillion miles...road trip anyone?!? Scientists have already discovered over 300 planets outside our solar system, but this is the first that has not been a gas ball and can be proven to be solid! Unfortunately, it's a little too close to the star it circles keeping the average surface temperature at about 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit. That's about 1000 times hotter than the oven when you bake chocolate chip cookies...needless to say no life exists on this new planet, Corot-7b. To read the full article about this exciting new discovery click here.

But wait, that's not the only new discovery! Scientists have found the coldest spot in our solar system, and it's right in our own backyard, on the moon! The spot lies deep within a crater on the moon's south pole and measures temperatures as low as -397 degrees Fahrenheit. It's at least a degree cooler than Pluto, even though Pluto is 40 times farther from the sun! For more information click here.

The Universe is an amazing thing! Let me know what you think of these new discoveries!

Horray for Arrays!

It's a wonderful day for arrays! We've cut them, we've labeled them, and now we are playing games with them! Array cards are an awesome visual representation of multiplication pairs. Over the next few days we will be playing a variety of games with our array cards that will ultimately help us become more familiar with multiplication and division facts! For more information about array cards and the games we are playing click here. Take your cards home! Play the games with your family! Who knew a tiny rectangular piece of paper could lead to so many good times and so

much learning?!?

Is the Moon Made of Cheese?

No, my friends, the moon is not made of cheese. But what if the Solar System was edible? What would the planets be made of? Our class spent some time this week imagining that the Solar System was edible. During our Edible Solar System Lab, we studied various delicious items and formed a hypothesis about which item represented which planet in our solar system. Items used included: 2 cherries, 2 apples, a cantoloupe, a watermelon, a raspberry, and a pea. Of course these items come nowhere close to the actual size of the planets, but for our experiment's purposes, they provided an accurate model for comparison. Turns out, comparing the planets to fruit can be tricky! Take a look at our final and accurate matchings of edible items to planets. Be sure to notice Mercury, it's the barely noticeable pea on the far left side of the photo. Does anything surprise you?

Let me know!

Attention Shuttle Commanders

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Are you curious about the distance between each planet? Are you having a hard time comprehending the vastness, of the dimensions, of the universe? Then this take-home lab is for you...This is your mission, should you choose to accept it. Obtain the following document. Read the directions carefully. Enjoy your journey through space!!! Don't forget to return your observation notes to mission control (our classroom). If you do so by Monday, September 14, you will be eligible for 5 success tickets!!!