When teaching kids Astronomy, how do you do it?

For any of you that have ever taught, or presented, Astronomy to children (say between 6 and 12 year olds), what did you do? Yep, I'm looking for some insight, ideas, and suggestions and how to tackle such an attention-redundant lot! Be it at summer camp, in the classroom, or a club night. I have done so in the summer camps myself before, but sometimes it was not that appealing, because if you get the wrong kind of kids, Astronomy is not cool enough. All insights appreciated.



Seanie.

I don't have any ideas but I do agree that the subject should be made more appealing to the younger age groups. Personnally I feel that astronomy is portrayed to much as a science subject where a knowledege of equations and complicated maths is needed. Astronomy should be fun and let people see there's more to science than what's taught in the classroom. This should apply across the board and not just to children.

My advice would be to make things as graphical as possible. I have a one hour talk on the life cycle of stars that I have given to 10-12 year olds a few times that has always gone down well. The vast majority of the slides are HST images of the various stages.

Images that tell stories as well as just looking cool would seem to work well.

Bart.

Astronomy is not cool enough. All insights appreciated.



Seanie.

NOT 'COOL' ENOUGH!?!
Aww hell dude... Space is WELL cool!
Look at all the Si-Fi stuff on TV!

If it were me...I'd Make a video presentation of launches / explosions / fly bys
all that kind of stuff...
Kids (and well, let face it, us 'adult' kids, all love the audio visual...
remember they are the x-box generation!
So graphics heavy clips would be the way to go...
(this is all of course if you have access to a projector)

I'm pretty sure if you started off a presentation of a count down of a rocket launch and when it just takes off the thing explodes into a fireball
that'd get there attention!
You could then segway into how dangerous and hard it is to get into space..

Nasa.gov have a lot of stuff like that...
I'm sure Dierdre K has some stuff she can get you.
I seem to remember from the tlk last year in Whirlpool that
a video called 'Ring World' was available and was shown to hundreds
of kids in a village in India and it went down a storm.

Most people have no interest in astronomy.

Most people find mathematics a bore.

Give up.

Dont push what cannot be shoved.

Peter.

P.S.:
Ptolmy,Tyco and Copernicus etc. were RARE among humans.

The mob believes what they are told to believe.

Peter.