Launching the Unit!

During the stay-at-home order due to COVID-19, my own two kids noticed something back in April that got me thinking.  It got me thinking so much that I looked for what they saw again and again, and well, I can only say that it got me thinking!

We also then began noticing things with our basketball hoop that we play with in our alley at all times of the day!  Could what we see with the shadows be connected to what's going on with the sky?

And a late night read on social media, Mrs. Brinza got an interesting email from the Adler Planetarium, with some great timelapse videos of the sky, too! 

catalina_foothills_sunrise

This is "catalina_foothills_sunrise" by Elijah Parker on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

catalina_foothills_sunset

This is "catalina_foothills_sunset" by Elijah Parker on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

All these sightings, pictures, and videos made us wonder a lot of questions, so using Google Forms, students submitted questions they were wondering!  We built out our Driving Question focused on three areas!

Since we had so many questions, we also thought about related phenomena, investigations we could do to answer our questions, alongside materials we might need at our homes (since we didn't have access to things at school due to the school-closure).

Our next steps?  To answer our questions as they relate to the Moon and the Sun!