How To Teach Your Toddler Astronomy – The Unplanned Lesson
As homeschool parents we plan out our curriculum for the year. However, we also have the ability to switch gears to something our child seems interested in. This is exactly how this lesson came about. My 3 year old son said to me, “Mom, did you know that Saturn is a planet?” I smiled and said yes! He then asked, “Did you know that Saturn is in outer space”? I said really? WOW! To which he replied, “Ya! And it has rings around it”! We have talked about the planets before and I’m guessing that he connected the dots on his own between what we have told him and the Curious George Christmas movie. If you’re a parent to a toddler you know exactly what I’m talking about because you watched it a thousand times last month on Nextflix. No? OK, just us then.
How To Teach Your Toddler Astronomy
Knowing that he was very interested in the planets at that exact moment, I used it as a teaching opportunity and grabbed a “special space book” to show him all the different planets. After we went through the book, we made a mock solar system using his favorite toys — cars. He learned that the Sun isn’t a planet but a huge, ginormous star and Saturn is one of the few planets with rings (which we used some of my bracelets for) and that all the planets go in a circle around the Sun. We then drove the planet cars around the Sun.
It’s moments like this that make me feel incredibly grateful that we are able to homeschool our children.
It’s moments like this that make me feel incredibly grateful that we are able to homeschool our children.
