When teaching kids Astronomy, how do you do it?

Since 2004 I have done over 60 presentations/talks to kids mostly in the 6 -11 age groups. Now in general children of this age will only give you their attention for about 20 minutes, after that they fidget and jig around and you have lost them.

Ring World is great but I have found that it is too long, so I tend now to show a ppt of images from the mission that is built into a solar system presentation. This goes down very well and I update the latest images form time to time.

In any group young or old you will not have everyone’s attention all of the time so you have to try and target groups in a way to appeal to the thinkers, the feelers and the doers.

Kids just love launches and landings so if I am doing a presentation for kids I try to include footage of things like the space shuttle and perhaps the mars rovers bouncing onto Mars.

Kids in this age group have little knowledge of space exploration and this is really obvious as when I show weightlessness they generally craic up laughing as they have never seen this before.

You have to place yourself in their minds and eyes, we take it for granted that people float in space but they do not know this

Now as regards showing them HST images, I try not to as they think that they can see these objects in this manor in an ordinary telescope.
They are disappointed when the do not see vivid colors and wild images.

I try to follow up a talk or presentation with a telescope evening. I think its terrific that members of my Society and members from other astronomy clubs give their time and support to these events.

First quarter moon time is the best for this but also in general the moon is the thing that gets the most Wow’s from kids. If they do not say Wow they say the most amazing things some not printable here

I have learned a lot from doing outreach and is only by doing stuff you learn what works and what does not. I have found that the most marginalized groups often give the most attention and tend to have those kind of kids that know all the names of the dinosaurs.

It is very rewarding to see kids light up to the night sky.


Deirdre Kelleghan

Irish Astronomical Society 1937 - 2007
www.deirdrekelleghan.com/
homepage.eircom.net/~irishas/index.htm

Thanks for the replies guys, keep them coming. Inspiration is always a welcome take on things. TAS is going to try and get a little more involved with the community in the comming Winter season (youth centre, telescope nights etc), so I personally always like seeing what works and what doesn't .

Seanie.

There was a good post by Frank Ryan earlier in that in general make it cool, astronomy in itself may not interest kids enough to drag them away from their playstations so start small and start with the useful stuff.

Teach them how to find the cardinal points of the compass using the stars and other celestial bodies, how to find south by pointing the hour hands of their watches towards the sun and all that stuff prized by adventurous types.

Once you've shown them how astronomy can help them and their friends find their way when lost or camping, introduce them to what they see quite often, the moon is a great starting point and endless photo's available from Nasa's website of the apollo missions will keep any mind young or old on tenderhooks, couple this with views of your own either throuch a telescope or powerful binoculars and you may just pull it off.

best of luck,

Don't forget to tell them that its a great excuse to stay up late

Hi Seanie

Get the highest power green laser you can get your hands on for a tour of the constellations, you then hear the “Ooohs” and “Aaahs” from the children, I tried this at AI SBQ with a 35mw green laser and it works a treat, the kids were amazed, as well as the big kids!
I seen another amateur astronomer using his telescope/video camera which was hooked up to a laptop and high power projector, the idea was that everyone could see a live image of certain celestial objects projected onto a large screen, a brilliant idea, it’s a pity the night in question was cloudy, but it did grab a lot of attention, kids were asking lots of questions, the Moon projected through such a system would have been very impressive indeed!
You need to get the kids involved, for example what I did one time was to pick out kids one at a time from the audience so that each of them would represent a certain planet, one would be the sun; one would represent the asteroid belt etc, it gave them some idea of the scale of the solar system in a fun way, one young chap was very proud that he was Mars, the roman god of war as I informed him, although I did not tell the other young chap that he represented the roman goddess of love !
You could also check out any iridium flare events for the area in question, I’m sure the kids would be amazed at your predictive powers and a bright flare event!
Seanie, I would highly recommend that you add information during or at the end of your talk about the possibility of other life elsewhere in the universe, mention SETI and extra-solar planets etc, the kids really go for this stuff, it excites them, they have such a natural curiosity on this matter and are quite open to it, I’m sure UFOs will be mentioned as well by them, be prepared for lots of questions!
Hope this helps and good luck. If you want a loan of the laser just give me a shout!

Clear skies
Mike