The earth the sun and the moon

We made a solar system. The earth orbits sun the moon orbits the earth.

Bear vs Salmon

Today we enjoyed watching the live web cam of the Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park, Alaska.  The link to this is on our link list on our home page.  

We noticed that while there were no bears waiting the salmon were working hard to jump up the falls as they make their way home.  Jordan O wondered how they can jump, this started lots of wondering!  When a bear came along the salmon stopped jumping, I wonder how they knew the bear was there?  A couple of times we watched a bear chow down on an unlucky salmon.  Lucky for the bear, not so lucky for the salmon.

We also started following @StationCDRKelly (astronaut Scott Kelly) who is currently stationed on the International Space Station (ISS).  He is accepting peoples questions and answering them.  We have tweeted to ask how he gets air to breathe in space.  I think he had already gone to bed when we tweeted so we'll have to wait and see if we get a response!

Space reading

We are learning lots about Space in reading groups.  There are lots of fantastic titles on Epic! 

Training like astronauts

Now that we have worked on our agility we are building up core strength. Astronauts need to look after their backs so need good core strength. 

Building the solar system

Yesterday those people on green light painted the solar system.

Astronaut agility

Astronauts spend a lot of time in the gym as they can't use their muscles in the same way while they are in space.  We are using an agility course NASA use to improve the agility of their astronauts.  

Long shadows

To begin our learning on space we went outside to measure our shadows at different times of the day. The first ones on the right were traced around 9:30 and the second ones on the left at 11:45. The shadows are long because it is winter and the sun is low in the sky. 

Why does the sun rise and set?

Today we began our science inquiry into space.  We are learning to use models to help us understand.  Here are some photos of our investigation into shadows and which is moving, the sun or the earth.