The History of Astronomy Part 3

One of the great mysteries the ancient people struggled with was how the things in the sky related to the earth. Did the sun travel around the earth? Why did the stars move the way they did? How did the moon fit in?

They came up with some ideas:

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/hsw/23313-the-history-of-astronomy-the-greeks-and-mayans-video.htm

Unfortunately, some of their main ideas, like the earth being the center of the solar system, were really wrong. Fortunately, some people started to figure that out:

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/science-channel/29275-100-greatest-discoveries-theory-of-copernicus-video.htm

To learn more about Copernicus, read here: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/hawking/universes/html/coper.html

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/hsw/23314-the-history-of-astronomy-laws-of-planetary-motion-video.htm

To learn more about Kepler, read here: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/hawking/cosmostar/html/kepler.html

Kepler, one of the men who figured out what was going on with the planets, was not only a great scientist, but also one of the first science fiction writers. He got this book from his teacher, Tycho Brahe, and it helped him with his theories. You can see a scanned copy of the actual book here: http://www.sil.si.edu/DigitalCollections/HST/Brahe/brahe.htm

The History of Astronomy and the Calendar

Eventually, the people figured out that they could, at least, use the sky to help them tell time. So they invented the Calendar. It took a long time to figure out how many days to put in the year in order to keep the seasons happening during the same months every year. 

"The origin of the Calendar is tough to pin down. We know that many ancient peoples had their own calendars. 


"Many primitive cultures used a four-day week, possibly in honour of the four directions. Central American peoples used a five day week; Assyrians (an ancient people who lived in what is now Turkey) had a six day week; pre-Christian Romans in the 1st century BC had weeks of eight days called nundinae.

For many centuries, ancient Greeks - like Babylonians (ancient people who also lived near what is now Turkey and Iran) and Egyptians of the same period - divided their 30-day months into three "decades" of ten days. (Egyptians called their ten-day period decans.)

"The biggest change in calendars was brought about by Julius Caesar in 46 BC. Caesar, taking advice from an astronomer named Sosigenes, extended that year (46 BC) to a total of between 443 and 445 days. He then extended future calendars to 365 days a year. The 365 day calendar is called the Julian Calendar in his honour.

"Julius Caesar also added an extra day in February (making a “leap year”) every four years, without exception. As it turned out, this was too much – it added almost eight more days than necessary in each thousand years. As the years passed, the calendar became further and further out of phase with the seasons. As time went on, the summer season started in October!

"In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII did two things to correct this problem. First, he shortened October of 1582 by ten days. Then he ruled that any year whose number ended with 00 must also be evenly divisible by 400 in order to have a 29-day February. Confusing? What Pope Gregory essentially did was re-adjust the calendar so that the seasons would always match up to the months they were supposed to." 

( http://www.cbc.ca/kids/general/the-lab/history-of-invention/default.html)

Go to this site and explore some. The Lakota were a native American people who kept records, including some about astronomical events, on their yearly calendars.

http://wintercounts.si.edu/index.html

The History of Astronomy Part 2

"Astronomy has been practiced for as long as humans have been looking at the sky and wondering what it all means. Early civilizations, for example, Harappans, Mayans, and ancient Chinese used astronomy to keep track of time, orient their cities, and to try to predict the future. Early astronomy was a mix of careful observation of the positions and motions of the heavenly bodies, religion, and astrology." (http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/history.php#questions)


All around the world and through time, people have tried to figure out what they were seeing.

Notice in the video that it showed pictures the Chinese drew to represent comets. The pictures looked like balls with broomsticks coming out of them.

How would you draw the things you see in the sky? Can you make a picture that distinguishes between the different object (since all of them could be drawn as circles, I suppose)? Take a few minutes to make pictures of how you would show what's in the sky. Include at least the sun, a star, a comet, a planet, and a moon. You could also include a shooting star, a satellite, or any of the other things you can see in the sky.

For more, you can watch this (starts boring)

http://www.hulu.com/watch/63308/cosmos-the-backbone-of-night?c=News-and-Information#x-0,vepisode,1

The History of Astronomy Part 1

People have always looked up at the sky and tried to figure out everything they could about it. Now we have tools to help us learn more (we'll learn more about these tools later). In the past, people didn't always have tools to help them figure out what was going on in the sky. They just had their eyes.

Talk about it: If you didn't know anything about the sky except what you could see, what are some explanations you might make up for why things in the sky are the way they are? For example, what was happening when the moon changed shape night by night? What made the stars twinkle? Why does the sun move like it does?

After watching for a long long time, and keeping records of what they were seeing, people started coming up with ideas about what was actually happening up there.


For example, here are some ways people thought about the earth and its shape:
http://nfo.edu/astro/models.htm


Watch this short movie, and then the long one.

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/science-channel/29279-100-greatest-discoveries-the-planets-move-video.htm

http://www.hulu.com/watch/63319/cosmos-the-harmony-of-the-worlds?c=News-and-Information#x-0,vepisode,1

Science: Astronomy: Some cool facts about space

Let's take this quiz and see how much we already know about space:

http://funschool.kaboose.com/globe-rider/space/space-quiz.html

Resources: Online Writing Workshop

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/

Resources: Online Learning Components for Holt/McDougal publications

Click on the subject and a state on this page:

http://www.classzone.com/cz/index.htm##

And it takes you to a list of books. Click one, and you get to the online support page for that book. Some of these are chock full of activities, animated lessons, links, tutorials (like on math topics), online worksheets, etc. While some of these activities are very book-dependent, others are linked to a specific piece of literature or knowledge you can access elsewhere (like in a "complete works of O. Henry" book you could find in a library or elsewhere online or a math concept).

And they're free.

And useful even if you don't own the books.

Resource: Online Course on Web Research

http://www.classzone.com/books/research_guide/page_build.cfm?state=none&CFID=41983748&CFTOKEN=42628837

If you follow the links on this page in order, this is a complete course on doing research online.

Resources: Online Current Events for Kids

http://www.hmcurrentevents.com/

Resources: Clickable Online World Atlas

http://go.hrw.com/atlas

GREAT Resource for homeschoolers

This one is a little complex to find at first, so bear with me.

Go to the Higher Ed Page on McGraw Hill's website:
http://catalogs.mhhe.com/mhhe/home.do

On the LEFT side there is a box labeled "Browse Catalogs". Go there and click either main or specialty and choose a category from the bulleted list that opens.

That will open a list in the main center box on the page. Choose a sub-category. This should open a list right there below the subcategory. The number in parentheses tells how many books are in that subject. Choose a subject from the list. A list of books with cover art pops up. Choose a book by clicking on the title. Now look at the left side, below the "browse catalog" box. For some (but not all) textbooks, there will be an additional box that says "supplements and resources". For some (but not all) textbooks, on the list of supplements and resources is an "Online Learning Center". Click there.

The Online Learning Centers vary--some books have AWESOME ones full of useful resources (like the Astronomy one: http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072482621/student_view0/ ). When you click on Online Learning Center, it will take you to a home page for that textbook. On the left side will be a box. In that box, choose "Student Edition". That's where the good stuff is.

Once you click Student Edition, you'll get a mostly blank home page. On the left is a tab, sometimes big and sometimes quite small, with content links in it, including a box that says, "Choose a chapter." Do that. Choose a chapter and check out what's available--quizzes, web links, animations, activities, etc. Very cool and useful stuff. The Astronomy section, for example, includes a chapter summary that, combined with the web links for that chapter, are a complete astronomy course for children. It might not be sufficient for a college course without the complete text book, but it's great for pre-college work.

You have to explore some. Some of the textbooks have GREAT online learning centers, others have interesting ones--an American Music text's OLC includes a listening library with links to songs on iTunes and complete listening guides in Word format--again, not, perhaps, a complete college course in American Music, but more than enough for pre-college and introductory courses.

This is an incredibly valuable free resource for homeschoolers, even if it takes a little exploring to find the good stuff.

NOTE: I have done some research and am compiling a list of OLCs available for free. You can reach them here: http://learninglynx.blogspot.com/2010/01/olcs-and-how-to-use-them.html with ideas on how to use them in homeschooling.

Full Humanities Courses Online

http://www.mhhe.com/HumanitiesStudio/


This is an incredible site. If you want to teach your children about the humanities, I recommend you explore it thoroughly. There are e-book guides to film, theater, and museums, visual illustrations of concepts from dance, art, music, etc.

Go see.

Real Life Mysteries: What do you think?: The Stones of Carnac and other Megaliths

The mystery: Why are these stones lined up like that?

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/the_universe/uts/carnac.html

The stones of Carnac aren't the only amazing and mysterious stones.  Check here for more information and links:
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/the_universe/uts/megalith.html

New Mini-Feature: Real-life Mysteries/What do you think?

For fun, I'm going to start posting links to information about real-life mysteries for kids to ponder. These are fun, keep curiosity alive, and give kids a chance for creative thinking based in fact, which is what scientists have to do all the time.

These won't show up at any regular times--just when I come across something, I'll post it.

Humanities: Time Lines

A Time Line is a chart that shows events and when they happened.

For example, go to this web page and make a time line:

http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/timeline/

Choose some events from your own life, like your birth, when you started school, etc, and generate a timeline for your life.

This is a really interesting website full of timelines:
http://www.timelineindex.com/content/home.php

This list of timelines helps us with all of humanities:
http://www.timelineindex.com/content/select/612/44,1573,612

Check out this cool time line:
http://americanhistory.si.edu/timeline/index.cfm

Let's start a timeline to keep track of when we're talking about. Make a long line and put yourself at the end. Then put Ancient Egypt at the beginning, and fill in important world events between (birth of Christ, when Nephi lived, when George Washington lived, etc).

For more in-depth information about time lines, their benefits and limitations, and how computers are changing the face of humanities, read here: http://hyperstudio.mit.edu/ 
You can also look here: http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/docs/ for even more complex information (suitable esp for high school students who are interested in programming)

Humanities: Ancient Egypt: Where is it?

Look at this map: http://maps.google.com/. Zoom out until you can see North America and Europe/Africa on the same screen.

See where we live?

Over on this other part of the map is Egypt today. Print this map, color it, and hang it on the wall for reference. Mark your house and Egypt.

Now click on Egypt and zoom in until you have a map just of that country. Print and color this, too. Point out the Nile river and some of the major cities. Click on "terrain" and "satellite" and talk about the different details you can see.

What kind of landscape is there in Egypt? Mostly desert, with a big fertile strip in the middle where the Nile river is.

Now click on this page: http://www.ancient-egypt-online.com/ancient-egypt-map.html and look at the maps there. Finally, print and color this map, too, and add it to the others on your walls:
http://www.rom.on.ca/programs/activities/egypt/learn/map.php.

LONG ago (we'll talk about this more in the next lesson), Egypt really was just the area around the river. Everything else was desert that nobody really wanted. Look at the map and talk about what is on it. See how some of the cities are the same? They are very old cities. Talk about the individual cities. For example, Alexandria had the greatest library in the ancient world and one that people are still sad that it burned down.

You can look up some of these cities (Cairo, Alexandria, Thebes, Memphis, Heliopolis, etc) on wikipedia for more information about them.

Notice on the map that LOWER Egypt is at the TOP, and UPPER Egypt is at the BOTTOM. Why do you think this is? (It has to do with the direction the Nile flows....)

Spend some time studying the maps and discussing them, and then save them for reference for the next few months as we study Ancient Egypt.

Humanities: a note to get started

There are two approaches to teaching Humanities to children. One is to start with the present and go backward, with a sort of "this came from...." approach. The other, more common, is to start as far back as you care to and follow a more "this led to...." approach. I am more interested in the first, which takes what children can see around them and works backward to things that are unfamiliar.

My children were more interested in the latter.

So we're starting with Ancient Egypt.

Meteor Shower Alert:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,575092,00.html?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a4:g4:r3:c0.000000:b0:z5

The Leonid Meteor Shower is Monday night/Tues Morning. See debris burn up that was left in the sky the year Monteverdi was born and Mary, Queen of Scots, lost her throne to James.

http://tonightssky.com/MainPage.php

http://www.earthsky.org/tonighthome/

To find out when and where you should watch, google "leonid" and your city/state name.

Computer Programming Ed. Tools, a Guest Post by J. Max Wilson

The kids might enjoy learning about computer programming with these free tools:

Scratch
A visual programming language to create and share interactive stories, games, music, and art developed by MIT for teaching children the basic concepts of computer programming.  Oriented toward 8 years old and up.
http://scratch.mit.edu

Alice
Is like Scratch but designed for more advanced object oriented programming techniques and produces 3D animations, games, and videos.  It is geared toward middle school aged children.
http://www.alice.org

ed. note:  You might also look here: http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Teach_a_Kid_to_Program
and here: http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/05/5-tools-to-introduce-programming-to-kids/

microbiology site

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/