Thursday

A conversation about stars and the moon:

So you guys were talking about putting the stars and the moon in the black area.
What do we know about stars? Or do we know any stars? 
We can’t know stars. Stars are a circle with pointy stuff. - Jack 
But when you look at them, they look almost like dots because you can’t see the points. - Elle 
Because they’re far away from the stars. If you go close to them you can see the points. - CC 

Why do the stars fly  up without wings? - Sylvie
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Because the world is spinning, so the earth can bring the stars up and bring it to the sky. - Reed

​Did you know the sun is a star? - Janie 

The sun is not a star, it’s just a great ball of fire. - Lucia 
The sun is actually just a great ball of gas. - Jack
The gas makes the sun hotter. - Maxon 


You can only see stars with a telescope. - Nora 
Is that the only way? 
But when I was in Florida, and I didn’t look through a telescope, and I just saw a star. - Maxon 
Have you ever seen the stars at night? 
All said yes.

Some of those dots in the sky are planets. - Lucia 
Actually, the weight that takes the stars up, even though they dont have wings…the earth spins round and round, and that makes the gravity go down and that makes the stars go up. - Maxon 
Sometimes at night when I go out to dinner, and then when I get out of the dinner place, I see the moon, but when I’m walking the moon follows me. I don’t know why it does it. - Reed 
I have the same thing, but I’m driving and it’s the sun. I look outside and see the moon and the stars, and I’m going to my bed, the stars kind of come into my bedroom. And you can’t fly to a star with a rocketship because they’re too far away. - Lochie 
Yesterday, when we were coming back home... and we went to get cupcakes, and we were waiting in line... the moon followed me while I was walking there. - Elle
Sometimes when I’m driving I see that the buildings are following me - Reed 
Me too - Lochie 
The moon follows you because it doesn’t have gravity weight. How can the moon go up in the sky without wings just like a helicopter. Helicopters have spinners on the top to make it go up. - Maxon
​Well, I can answer how the moon goes away. The moon and the earth stay in the same place. - Giacomo

 
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How does the moon go away? He begins to show us with his hands. 
The moon spins around slowly, and when the moon has been here at Washington, it’s night in Washington because the moon is pointing at Washington. When it spins around, basically into different places of the world, then night and the day. ... The earth spins slowly so that there can be a lot of day and a lot of night. - Giacomo 
I don’t know if the night is longer than the day. - Maxon
The sun actually moves too. The sun moves around the galaxy. - Lochie 
Even though it doesn’t have wings, the sun actually is very hot, but our planet earth, that is not the sun, has giant volcanoes. -Maxon...
The sky actually has a hot air balloon, and the stars move when the star goes in the air balloon. And then, even though you can’t see the air balloon with any material, it’s still there. - Sylvie
You  can’t even see the hot air balloon. - Maxon
I have a book at home that says the planets move around the sun - Elle 
In outer space there are big dippers and little dippers. - Maxon 
Constellations. - Lucia
Are the stars random up in the sky or do they have a pattern? 
Sometimes random and sometimes they have a pattern. - Jack

DRAWINGS

 Lochie
The sun is spinning... it spins around the galaxy. And then I drawed and this side, and then I drawed the earth and it was this part facing the sun's light. It's dark on this side... Why was this something that making that black... So that's why I added this. So I added something black to make it dark because this side has the sun to make it light. The galaxy is... it's like the middle of the whole solar syste...it's like right (finger moving around the sun and Earth) The galaxy is space. The earth goes around the sun and the sun spins around the galaxy. 

​Giacomo
Those are stars. This is spinning. That’s the sun, and that’s the moon. This is a blackhole. It’s sucking in the stars. It can suck up light. (about the black hole)

Lucia
Illustrated on the left: This is the constellation from the book (book of constellations).
Illustrated on the right: A big monster constellation. I made it on my own, I just made it up in my brain. So it’s just like you hop on and then it carries you for a short ride and then it takes you home and drops you off.  

​Sylvie
Day of: I made my own constellation. It's a monster that only comes out at night. The circles are the stars. 
Reflection: The lines are how the stars connect. The lines show the stars where they just move. It’s a monster how they kind of… and someone created it a hundred years ago. I looked in the book, and then each circle is a piece from the book. Then I made all of them and I connected them to make one big thing. Each circle, those are the stars.

Lucia
These are the lights. The light that you can see so you know if it is the moon or not the moon. This is its power so it can walk. So that it can move and follow you. These are its lights, and these are the stars around it. …”  “And I did the full moon, and this is like a rocket ship shooting up into space and landing on the moon in outer space. And these are all the planets.”

Sylvie 
This is the air balloon and this is the sky. They are the same color, so that’s why you can’t see it. The air balloon makes the star follow you. The moon has invisible wings. [What happens if the balloon runs out of air? - Giacomo] It has a lot of air. It can go a thousand miles. [You’re not floating because of gravity. Space does have gravity. So, how would the air balloon be built if there’s no air in space? - Giacomo]  It doesn’t go in space. It goes to the top of the sky. It doesn’t go above teh sky. It doesn’t go in outer space. It just goes following us. The air balloon just carries the star to us. This is just how the star carries. It’s not anything about…it’s just how the stars follow you. 

A small group conversation about constellations:

What is a constellation? 
“It’s a group a stars that makes the stars… A group of stars that make a shape of someone from a long time ago.” Giacomo
“Makes the shape of something.” Lochie
“But, but t’s almost the exact same thing, it just looks like something else. Pretend that this is the man and that’s like the picture. But then, the picture of the group of stars is not the same way! Like… it’s not like from arms to like the head… It’s just a different way.” Lucia

Where do we find these constellations? 
“We usually find them in the country.” Sylvie
“They live in outer space! And then, at night time, sometimes they come down and then they show the constellations.” Lucia 
“They don’t come down. They fell. As you can see, like the darks of things are stars! You can’t see the sites, but the sites are really there. It’s just that you are too far away. And shooting stars, they just have this like rocket that has blue, blue-violet coming out of them.” Giacomo
Why can we not see stars now?
“Because it’s daytime!” Lucia

Why are there constellations? Why do they exist?
“I don’t know.” Lochie
“It’s just to decorate the sky.” Sylvie
“I don’t know. To make people say…” Lochie
“You can see who lived a long time ago.” Giacomo

When you look up at the night sky, do you see lines on the constellation?
“I’ve never seen a constellation!” Sylvie
“I’ve never seen a constellation! I haven’t seen a comet either.” Lucia
“My mom said we can see them when we go camping, but—we did not! We’ve been camping twice.” Sylvie 

The moon moves and follows us? Say more.

“The moon moves the way we move. The moon just follows you, it follows you without even thinking. The constellations just stay where they are. We are moving. The constellations, they just came somewhere and stay there. So if we want to draw them, then we can see them … catch them. The constellation does not move. We go, the constellations stay.” Sylvie


If we stay in the same place, and didn’t move, what would we see in the sky? Would the constellations stay in the same place or move?

“Same place.” Lucia

“A different place.. So imagine if the Big Dipper is in Lucia’s yard, and that if it stays in place that would mean she would see it every night, in her backyard. But stars (?) can see planets so… So the Big Dipper moves because…” Giacomo

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Happy Birthday, Elyse!