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I CAN define a planet, star, and constellation.

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I CAN explain what a light-year is and how it is used to measure distances.

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I CAN identify important people from biographies and autobiographies.

I CAN create my own autobiography.

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Get your space suit on and dance in space like Neil Armstrong!

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I CAN write a short story (5-7 sentences) using correct spelling and grammar.

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I CAN design my own planet and write characteristics about my planet

I CAN observe a video and respond to related questions

I CAN respond with multiple sentences to a topic given.

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"National Geographic Readers: Planets"
"National Geographic Readers: Night Sky"
"National Geographic Readers: Everything Space."

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1.  Read "Look Inside Space"
2. Watch Video and respond to the questions
3. Create your own planet
4. Write 4 sentences describing your created planet.

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"What is a light-year?"

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A light-year is how astronomers measure distance in space. It's defined by how far a beam of light travels in one year - a distance of six trillion miles. Think of it as the bigger, badder cousin of the inch, the mile, the kilometer, and the furlong. If you like to keep up with what's going on in astronomy, it's worth spending a little bit of time understanding what the deal is with this funny unit of measurement.

Have you ever been on your way to meet some friends and, while en route, called to tell them you're running late? If you're like me, you might tell them "I'm about ten minutes away". You're using how long it will take you to get there as a substitute for how far away you are. Astronomers do the same thing when figuring out the distance to a star or galaxy, but instead of relying on how fast they could drive or walk, they use a beam of light as their reference.

Why do things this way? First, light is convenient. Throughout the universe, all light travels at exactly the same speed: about 670 million miles per hour. We don't usually think about light traveling anywhere because when we flick on a light switch - there it is! We don't have to wait for the room to light up. It happens instantaneously. Except that it's not instantaneous, just insanely fast. In fact, let's pause for a second and reflect on how ludicrously quick the speed of light is.

Traveling at that speed, you would encircle the globe of Earth almost eight times in one second.

Impressive! Certainly faster than traveling by airplane. So if you were to travel off the Earth in a straight line at light speed, you'd get pretty far in the same amount of time, right? Actually, since space is so vast, you wouldn't have even made it to the moon. Travel to the moon takes about a second-and-a-half, at light speed. Travel to the sun at light speed takes about eight minutes. Can you even imagine? Traveling at a speed where you cross nearly 200,000 miles every second for eight full minutes would only get you to the center of our solar system.

The fact that light takes time to get anywhere has an interesting side effect. If light from the sun takes eight minutes to get to us, then we're actually seeing the sun as it was eight minutes ago. We're looking into the past!

While this sounds a little crazy, it's actually something with which you're already familiar. If you've ever seen fireworks, for example, you know that you see the explosion and then a few seconds later you hear it. If you close your eyes during the fireworks show, you'd only have your ears to know when things were happening. Since it takes some time for the sound to get to you, you'd always be hearing things a few seconds after they happened. The same happens with light: we only see something once the light from that event actually gets to our eyes. When we're looking across a room, the time delay is only a few billionths of a second. But when we start looking across large enough distances, the light becomes noticeably delayed like the sounds are from exploding fireworks.

The main reason for using light years, however, is because the distances we deal with in space are immense. If we stick to miles or kilometers we quickly run into unwieldy numbers just measuring the distance to the nearest star: a dim red dwarf called Proxima Centauri that sits a mere 24,000,000,000,000 miles away! Using a longer yard stick, so to speak, helps keep the numbers at least manageable. To an astronomer, the distance to Proxima Centauri is only four light years. Put another way, it takes the light from our stellar next door neighbor four years to get to Earth.

The Milky Way galaxy in which our sun and all the stars we see at night reside spans 100,000 light-years from one end to the other. Putting that into perspective, the duration of recorded human history is roughly 5,000 years. So light from a star at one end of our galaxy takes 20 times longer than all of recorded history to get to the other end.

Moving beyond our galaxy, it's just over two million light years to our nearest galactic neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy. The light we currently see from that galaxy left there about the same time the ancestors of modern humans were first discovering stone tools.

Our last stop takes us to the edge of the visible universe. It's also here where the trickiness of measuring distance in an ever-expanding universe becomes apparent. The light we see coming from the farthest depths of the universe has been traveling across the cosmos for almost three times longer than our planet has existed: nearly 14 billion years! But there's a catch: we cannot say that the edge of the visible universe is 14 billion light-years away.

Why? Because the universe has grown larger in that time! A galaxy whose light took 14 billion years to reach our little planet has, in the intervening aeons, moved even further away. The current physical distance to that remote beacon, if we stopped the universe from expanding and stretched out a really long tape measure, is just over 46 billion light years! Even in light years, measuring distances across the universe becomes unwieldy. But measuring in something familiar, like miles, is truly humbling. From here to the edge of our vision spans a distance of approximately 276,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles.

And it's getting bigger every day.

Bottom line: How far is a light-year? It's the distance a beam of light travels in one year - a distance of six trillion miles.

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distance to sun and moon in light-minutes

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A light-year is how astronomers measure distance in space. It's defined by how far a beam of light travels in one year - a distance of six trillion miles. Think of it as the bigger, badder cousin of the inch, the mile, the kilometer, and the furlong.

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"I am Neil Armstrong" by Brad Meltzer.

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"Zoom Rocket Zoom" by Margaret Mayo and Alex Ayliffe

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"Look Inside Space" by Usborne

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You will be creating a short story (5-7 sentences) about going to space in a rocket. The story can be imaginary or about an experience you want to in the future. You should follow these steps when writing your short story...
1. Fill out the pre-writing sheet. You must have it approved by the teacher before you move on. :)
2. Once your pre-writing work sheet has been approved by the teacher you may put your short story together using your pre-writing worksheet.
Remember that your short story must include an introduction sentence, at least 3 body sentences, and a conclusion sentence.

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"What is a Light Year for Children? 60 Second Science Questions for Kids - FreeSchool"

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What is a Light Year for Children? 60 Second Science Questions for Kids - FreeSchool

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History of Neil Armstrong for Kids | Bedtime History

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Rocket Science: How Rockets Work - A Short and Basic Explanation

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Enjoy watching this video of how we could build a planet. Please remember that this is with specific conditions and many "What if this happens" ideas. Enjoy!

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There is a group of scientists trying to determine how long it would take them to get to a new planet they discovered called Goomphadoo. Planet Goomphadoo is 3 light years away. Write the scientists a letter to tell them how many miles they need to travel to get to Goomphadoo.
(Hint: 1 light year = 6 trillion miles)

1. Determine how many miles the scientists must travel.
2. Write the scientists a letter that includes how far they must travel.

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You will be creating an autobiography (5-7 sentences) that also includes illustrations. Remember an autobiography is a story that is written about yourself. When writing your autobiography you should follow these steps....
1. You need to brainstorm ideas to write about.
2. Write your first draft of the paper and show it to the teacher.
3. Once you have showed it to the teacher and had it approved, you will be given a new sheet of paper to write and illustrate on.

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In this section of the center you will be able to create your own planet You will use this foam ball to paint, color, decorate, add too in order to make it into your own planet. You are allowed to use all art supplies as long as you are responsible with it. When finished put on counter top to dry in back of classroom.

To Do:

1. Grab a white foam ball
2. Choose how to color it (Paint, Markers)
3.  Add details (hole, bumps, other classrooms objects)
4. Put on back of counter top to dry.

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Because of your fantastic math, the team of scientists have asked you to join their team. They have asked you to design a spaceship that can travel at the speed of light (670,616,629 mph.) Create a spaceship using various materials that can withstand this high speed. Among your team, determine who created the best spaceship and explain why.

1. Using any of the materials provided, build a spaceship strong enough to travel very very fast.
2. When everyone is finished building, choose the best spaceship (it could be someone else's!)
3. Talk with your group about which spaceship is the best and why.

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After finishing your autobiography and having it approved by the teacher, you will create a flipgrid video of yourself reading your autobiography.

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Now that we have learned all about rockets and how they work its time to build one on our own!
Attached is a video that will take you step by step on how to build a rocket. Every piece that you need to build your rocket is on the front desk. Please go up and grab these materials...
1. One half sheet of black paper
2. One paper cylinder
3. 1 roll of tape
4. 1 Scissors
5. 3 Fins
6. One black cone
Some steps require a hot glue gun. When we get to this step I will help you individually.
As a class we will watch this video together and I will pause it as we go through it step-by-step so we can design our rockets. Are you ready?

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Using all the information on planets that we have learned this week write 4-6 sentence about a planet that you have created. Make sure your writing includes responses to these questions:
1. What color is your made up planet?
2. Do people live on this planet?
3. Can you get there from Earth?
4. Is it warm or cold on this new planet?
5. How many moons does it have?

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Design Your Own Constellation!
You will be creating your very own constellation using the following materials:
1. Black construction paper
2. I stick of white chalk
3. Yellow neon star stickers
4. Name your constellation
Be creative and have fun, my fellow scientists!

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This is a mission from space! Now that you have created and named your own constellation, please write a short story telling other scientists about your constellation. This story needs to be 4 or more sentences long!