Field Trip: Das Clark Planetarium

Our field trip was the grand finale of our outer space unit. It was a lot of fun. It would have been a lot more fun if the place hadn't been crawling with kids from gazillion schools on their field trips, but I think that would be too much to ask.  Here are a bunch of my photos. (We went with our friends Nathan and Gabby).

Playing with clouds

 Playing with lightning - that sounds dangerous.

 Lukas' transportation for the day.

 A lot of those balls up there that Joshua was looking at were running around on a complex system of tracks taking them up around and everywhere. It was fun to watch.

 It took my awhile to figure out what setting on my camera to use. There was a replica of the solar system with the model planets in their relative sizes. I took photos of the kids with their favorite planets.

 Walking on the moon.

 Playing around on Mars.

 This was a fun little "game."  You started out with a sun, an earth, and an asteroid belt. Then you could move up to five other planets where you wanted them relative to the sun. When you pressed "go" the planets and asteroids would start orbiting and you could watch the collisions and see which planets eventually fell out of orbit, etc. When Joshua did it, earth collided and fell far out of orbit but eventually got sucked back in by the suns gravity. It was really interesting. And I was impressed that Joshua figured out how to play the "game" and move the planets by himself. Our computer time at the library is paying off.

 This big ball in the main foyer of the planetarium had a movie (actually four) playing on it. So the ball was actually a big movie screen and it would teach you about the different planets. There were four different projectors streaming so from whatever angle you looked at the "planet" you would see the film flawlessly. I thought this was really a creative exhibit.

There were a lot of other fun exhibits but they were a little more advanced than what my kids could really comprehend, but I enjoyed them.

We also watched a film in the Hansen Dome called "Ultimate Universe." It was also really interesting but again, a little above my kids. Even if they didn't learn anything about white dwarves and nebulas, I think they still enjoyed the film - you know, flying through space and visiting all the planets they had learned about the last few weeks.

After the movie all the other people left and the lights were on blue and Abigail went to the front of the room and started dancing. It was hilarious. She has some awesome moves. I took this video, but she had already danced her best and so this is just kind of the tale end. Anyway, that's it for Outer Space.