Space Night!

Last night was “Space Night” at Katherine’s school — two hours of Outer Space Educational Fun. They’ve been doing a lot of space science learning the past few weeks, so this was sort of the climax of that curriculum.

There were four half-hour activity centers, so the school population was split up that way (and by age). First center was where the kids got to perform for the parents some fun astronomical songs (the order of the planets, etc.). Katherine had fun doing that, as well as making constellations out of marshmallows and toothpicks, and eating planet- and star-shaped cookies and astronaut ice cream.

Next station was story-telling in one of the K classrooms. Four or five stories, led by a story-teller from the local library. Meh. Okay, but even below Kindergarten level in some cases, I think.

The next station was in Katherine’s class. A gent from Lockheed-Martin was there, talking about planets and space probes and cool stuff. He was hampered a bit by the age bracket, and we skipped over a lot of slides that I would have found really interesting. (The kids were, unfortunately, more interested in making shadow puppets in the projector.)

Last station was in the gym, where they had a planetarium set up, courtesy of the Museum of Natural History (or whatever glossy name it has these days). It’s actually an inflatable dome with a mini-planetarium set up inside, and I was one of the adults who got to go in and see the presentation on constellatoins and the zodiac and how to find things in the sky. The guy also told a story based on the constellation, which was enough to make me want to pick up a copy of Clash of the Titans for Kitten to see.

Alas, when we exited, the sky was all clouded up, so no chance to immediately look for Orion or the Big Dipper or Polaris or the other critters that were pointed out to us.

A fun night. Got to shake my head in annoyance at the lack of supervision and control some parents exercised over their kids (and made notes of a couple of kids whom Katherine hung with who were Bad Influences on her). But, overall, a good time. Glad we went.