Youth Club Summer Camp TAS Lecture a success

Hi folks,

Below is just a small account of my trip to the summer camp today to talk to the kids there.

I went to the youth center in Tullamore this afternoon, being invited to talk to the 1st and 2nd years in summer camp. I had to fill 1 and a half hours with them.
First, I just chatted generally with them, about scopes, bino's, school, interests - broke the ice a bit. I could see at this stage some were not going to be as interested as others clearly were!
Then I went through the TAS Venus Transit lecture for them in brief, with a few of those movies on the vt2004 dot org site - they pretty much liked it, and had a few questions.
Then I brought them outside to the yard, and with my binoculars, 70mm refractor, and an eclipse shade, we had a look at the sun, and passing cars trying to catch their reg's... and the girls coming out of the school finishing their exam! The boys were very interested in that!
Anyway, they were absolutely fascinated looking at the sun! I am well pleased because its the only thing to look at in the day time! (no moon visible today) When we projected the sun, they could not believe the size of the sunspots we saw! They counted 13 in all, and I briefly told them how big they were, what they were, and how they will move - and even produce the aurora at times. It was the most sunspost I've ever seen at one time on the face of the sun.
Now, I never checked the sun before this, so I got lucky with what we saw. I was told it was supposed to rain today!
Then we went back in side, where I gave them a second small slide show of some fabulous Hubble shots, produced a pea, a grape, and a grapefruit and a beachball (Moon -> Earth -> Jupiter -> Sun), to show distances and size comparisons, and explained the speed of light, as well as lots of interesting Did You Know's. Needless to say, they have short attention spans - but to help them pay attention, I had 2 small binoculars (currently on sale in Aldi for €10e) and had a small quiz for them to win them against (as well as some TAS 'vouchers' for free membership inclusive of club magazine).
At the very end, I handed them a survey sheet, just so that I could see what they were aware of in terms of amateur astronomy. The results were:

Number of kids: 19
Those who knew of TAS before today: 12
Those who knew of IFAS before today: 6
Those who own a telescope/binos: 11
Those interested in Astronomy: 16
Those who would like to join TAS: 8
Those who know we hold COSMOS every year: 5
Those studying science/nature in school: 10
Those who heard of another astronomyclub (name it): zero*

There were other various questions like whats your favourite planet to see through a scope for the first time and so on.

*None of them were aware of Astronomy Ireland

And, 3 came up to me individually expressly asking where we meet and the next time we're doing to. Pity we're over for the summer.
BUT, those who wanted TAS to keep in touch added their name and address etc at the bottom of the forms.

After all that, I'd say it was not a bad day. Kids ARE interested, and if you can hook 'em the right way, you can keep them interested!

Mind you, I'll have to wait and see in September if any of it pays off!

A few pictures are on our website.

Cheers,

Seanie.

Seanie,
Its encouraging to see that some of them know of the IFAS before your event.
Good job on the camp.

Seanie,
Its encouraging to see that some of them know of the IFAS before your event.
Good job on the camp.

Thanks Dave,
it is encouraging. Though I regret that when it was all over, they just wanted to go have fun, so I didn't get the chance to talk to any of them personally to ask where they heard about it!

Seanie.