In this course students will learn all about the Solar System!

Students will be engaged in a multitude of learning facets including group discussion, individual think time and sharing, sketching, writing, and creation of ideas, visual content, experiments and viewing scientific video clips. 

Here is the breakdown by topic: 

Week 1: What is the Solar System
Students will learn about the eight planets that travel around the sun and make up our solar system through non-fiction read aloud texts and science videos.
Students will learn that the sun is a gigantic star that is at the center of our solar system and that it produces all of the energy used on Earth.
They will learn the vocabulary words: planet, solar system, sun, star, asteroid, meteoroids, comet, orbit, dwarf planet, revolution, axis, rotation 
Students will create a solar system memory game that will be a fun and engaging way to practice all of the planets they learned about.
Students will have the opportunity to do a sun experiment after class in order to observe the amazing strength of the sun.

Week 2: The Planets 
Students will learn about the inner rocky planets including Mercury, Venus, Earth, & Mars.
They will learn the vocabulary words: terrestrial, crust, atmosphere, craters, greenhouse effect, habitat zone, moon
Students will learn about the outer gas planets including Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, & Jupiter.
They will learn the vocabulary words: gas giant, density, tilt, geyser
Students will complete a picture and fact sort comparing the rocky planets to the gas planets.

Week 3: The Moon 
Students will learn that the Moon is part of our solar system and the second brightest object in the sky. 
Students will learn how the tides movement are caused by the gravity from the moon on the oceans. 
Students will learn about the Moon phases that occur over a month including new moon, crescent moon, first quarter moon, gibbous moon, and full moon.
They will learn the vocabulary words: astronomer, telescope, waxing, waning, solar eclipse, lunar eclipse
Students will create a moon journal and observe the moon daily.

Week 4: Space Travel 
Students will learn about the first time people sent a rocket into space, a dog into space, and a person into space.
They will learn about Sputnik, Laika the dog (1st living thing to go into space), Yuri Gagarin (1st person in space), Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin (1st moon landing).
Students will learn all about gravity and what is needed for space travel. 
They will learn the vocabulary words: gravity, experiments, capsule, spacecraft, lunar model, lunar roving vehicle, space shuttle, space station, space probes
Students will follow the engineering design process to plan and create an object that can travel to space.