Sydney Observatory

When we left the school we were at last year, they very kindly gave us a Family Pass to the Observatory, plus a $50 voucher for Pancakes at the Rocks. It was very generous of them, and I thought they chose so appropriately for a soon to be homeschool family!
What a wonderful evening we had! First of all, the Pancakes were scrumptious. Daniel was especially gleeful that "we could skip dinner and go straight to dessert"! The tour of the Observatory itself was most interesting. There were a lot of little rooms with various displays and some interactive games for the kids to play, and we were free to wander for the first 20 minutes before the tour guide led us around. He was an enthusiastic astronomer and managed to impart his passion to our whole group. By the end of our session, most of us were talking about what types of telescopes we might buy, how we could learn more, and when we would return! I highly recommend that you visit. The Dome itself of the Observatory building is very clever. A portion of it opens up to bare the night sky, while the roof can be moved around to enable the telescopes to point in any chosen direction. It is nosiy and rumbles a bit like an earthquake when they make the adjustments, but this just seemed to add to the fun and excitement we all felt. They have 2 telescopes, and everyone got to have a turn of looking through them, once the tour guide lined it up. One was the original telescope from when the Observatory was built - it still works! The other telescope was more high tech and whilst one person was viewing, the rest of us could see exactly what they were looking at on the computer screens. Amazing! We had close up looks at Jupiter and the Moon, which was quite dazzling with its brightness. The tour guide took us outside and pointed out different things in the night sky with a green laser. It was so easy to make out a couple of constellations and the Southern Cross that way. We found trying to identify them from pictures in books a bit tricky, and once he joined the stars with the laser and we followed the path, we felt confident about recognising them in future. Also very entertaining was the 3D room where we were able to choose a 15 minute movie about travelling to Mars and watch it through the coloured glasses. Very cool. All in all, a fantastic night! Thank you *** you know who school!
This was a very fitting end to our unit on the Solar System. One of the more creative things we did during this unit was to make our own solar system model using paper mache on balloons, which looked great hanging from the ceiling! Yes, we included Pluto - even though it has been downgraded from being a planet. We came across a mnemonic for remembering our solar system's planetary names, based on their distance from the sun - My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us Nine Puppies Actually, 'puppies' wasn't the word used, I just changed it to pander to the kids love of dogs! Another crafty thing Sarah & Daniel enjoyed making was a Stargazer Box. This is made by taping the lid to a shoebox, cutting out a rectangle at one end which holds slides, and a smaller hole at the other end of the box to shine a torch through. They each chose 4 constellations that appealed to them, and had to pin prick the holes for the star's position on black cardboard. After dinner that night, we turned off all the lights and they very excitedly shone the torch through their stargazer box so the constellation was reflected onto the door in our livingroom. As part of their presentation, Sarah & Daniel gave Tony a short oral report on the name of the constellation and which hemisphere it could be seen from. Two of the constellation slides they chose and made were Crux (Southern Cross) and Canis Major (the Great Dog) of course!

Psalm 19:1 The heavens declare the Glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of His hands