Astronomy Unit Study

Putting together a new unit is always fun, but I have to admit that as the years go by and we circle back to familiar units, a new problem seems to emerge. Choice. What items from my own collection do I choose this time around? Our units are filled with various resources from games, to books, to projects and kits, to fiction and non-fiction books. Do we stick to old favorites or try new resources? This time around we did a short 3-week main lesson block inspired almost entirely by our Live-Education Waldorf curriculum. I will show you the materials we used for that main lesson block as well as materials we have used or plan to use for our unit study on Astronomy. We will return to our Astronomy main lesson block after we do our history units for the year. Currently, I've decided to split up large main lesson blocks into two smaller ones as recommended in the curriculum. The reason why we don't do this often is that once we get engrossed into a topic area, we like to see it through before moving. Three weeks is such a short duration for our units that it seems right when we are getting into the meat of the material, it's time to move on. However, one of the downsides to stretching a unit until all the material is covered is that there is a saturation of information and soon we just can't squeeze anything else in. Giving a few weeks to rest between main lesson blocks means that the information learning in one main lesson block as an opportunity to be digested and processed while new different material is being learning. So, this time around, this unit will be short and only feature the material shown at the beginning of the video as well as the games and some projects. When we revisit this main lesson block, I'll post the new updated lesson plans on my website (link below to the current 3-week lesson plan), and they will also be available on Homeschool Panda. We've been homeschooling since 2003, and in that time, we've collected a lot of resources for our unit studies. You certainly don't need this much. One good non-fiction book as well as some picture books, a book on mythology, some books on astronomers or scientists and some games and projects would round out a unit study very well. Check out the blog post that accompanies this video for more tutorials and links to resources: https://www.pepperandpine.com/astronomy/ You can see all the projects we did for this unit for the years by checking out this playlist:    • Galileo: A Homeschool Astronomy Project   Check out the lesson plans on Homeschool Panda: https://app.homeschoolpanda.com/lesso... Steps to import lesson plan: Step 1: Log into Homeschool Panda Step 2: Click on "Lesson Planner” from left hand pane Step 3: Click on “Import Lesson Plan” located on the top right Step 4: Paste this link: https://app.homeschoolpanda.com/lesso... and Click on "Import Lesson” See the blog post with my lesson plans here: https://www.pepperandpine.com/astronomy/ Find me here:   / pepperandpine     / pepperandpine     / pepperandpine   https://www.pepperandpine.com