Science Field Trip

     We went on our first field trip of the year this past Tuesday!  The whole fifth grade boarded a bus and traveled to the F.L. Schlagle Environmental Library near beautiful Wyandotte County Lake.  The purpose of the field trip was for students to build on the knowledge they have been gaining in Science.  We have been studying the universe, specifically our Solar System, and all things inside of it.
     Students went to two different stations: Scaling the Solar System and StarLab.  The following pictures are from Scaling the Solar system.

    
     The students first chose an object to represent the moon, trying to figure out what would make sense with the Earth balloon that Ms. Lana had.

      Ms. Lana helped the students "see" how far the moon is from the Earth.  This was done by wrapping string around the circumference of the Earth balloon 9 and a half times.  Then one student walked away from the Earth to show us all how far the two objects are from each other.

      The next activity the students engaged in was figuring out which beads represented each planet, and the order they were suppose to be in from the sun.

     
     Here is an example of what one group decided upon.  Look at those huge gas giants!

     The station that the students all LOVED was StarLab, which is a portable blow up planetarium.  Not only did students get to see constellations, Ms. Jessica told them the stories that the Greeks made up about the constellations.  You can imagine their excitement when the connection to Percy Jackson was obvious:)

    
     No pics from inside the StarLab;)