It's Back to School Time!

It's back to school time after way too short a summer. Being a 12 month employee it's only a break from the kids -- after summer spack camps, Alien Festival, and inservice training. This summer I went to Colorado to the Steve Spangler Science in the Rockies training to gather new and exciting science activities for the coming year. Some of these will show up in the Shoebox Science modules that are scheduled for some of your classes. Most will show up in the Tuesday night Family Science Night activities while I explore them with the kids and their parents to see how to best implement them in full class situations. Be sure to come by and see what cool stuff I brought home! Look on Marge's website -- the schedule is right there. You are welcome any time. No charge (to anyone). We are going to make slime, atomic worms, blow up big airbags with only one breath, blow square bubbles, and do other cool stuff. Guaranteed to interest your students.

For those of you who are new this year, or not familiar with what I do at the planetarium, let me bring you up to date. Once a month, on Saturday, there's Science Saturday. It runs from 10am to 12 noon and includes a star show. After the star show there are activites for students that relate to the show. The audience is generally the elementary school crowd, but everyone is welcome. Adults who just want to see the star show are welcome to come for that and leave before the fun starts. There is an attendance card and prizes including a free summer space camp. Family Science Night is once a month on Tuesday nights. There's no star show, but we build a lot of stuff, and play with lots of other science stuff. The catch is, the child has to bring a parent. We have passports and prizes including a free summer space camp. Summer Space camp is a half-day week long exploration of astronomy and science. Camps change each year depending on what exciting things I've acquired during the year. It's well attended. I did only three last year and they were full -- PK-1, 1-3, and 3-6. The older kids seem to have other things to do.

I've added several teachers to my school visit schedule and unless something changes, I'm already full for this year. Sorry, but there is only one of me, and so many of you. I am beginning to post the standards and benchmarks for the activities so if you need them, look on my website under "Outreach Information." It's not quite set up yet, but should be complete in the next few weeks. The information is complete for the Skytellers programs. For the Shoebox Science pages, not only will there be standards and benchmarks, but links for related online and classroom activities, so even if I can't make it to your classroom, there will be things you can do yourself. Where I can find them, the links will have math and literature connections as well.It's always exciting to begin a new school year and this year is no exception.

For those of you thinking about planetarium visits for your classes, check the calendars on Marge's website . Traditionally, there have been few visits to the planetarium except in the months of December and May, so I have kept those two months open for you to visit.