Look Up! Stargazing Activity

We spend a lot of hours looking down at our screens.

According to the Australian Government, Australian Institute of Family Studies, our heads are titled towards screens far in excess of national guidelines.

For children aged less than two years, the recommended daily screen time is zero hours. For children aged 2-5, it increases but is still less than 1 hour a day.

For children aged 5-17, no more than two hours of sedentary (recreational) screen time is advised.

Yet, only around 20% of preschoolers’ screen time usage meet these guidelines, while it’s only 15% for 15-12-year-olds.

While the use of screens is contentious, and there’s no denying the magic of a screen to get some respite for parents, research suggests potential negative effects including behavioural problems, namely related to anxiety, and self-esteem.

In an effort to get us looking up, rather than down, in this blog post, we’re going to explore the magic of looking up.

Looking up at the stars.

Stargazing

Stargazing is the practice of looking at the night sky in order to see stars and other objects. It can be done from a backyard, or from a location with less light pollution.

Some things that can be seen while star gazing include:

• The Milky Way
• Stars
• Constellations
• Planets

It’s estimated that there are around 100 thousand million stars in the Milky Way galaxy, which gives us rather a lot to explore!

There are many ways that parents can encourage their kids to get interested in stargazing. Some things that parents can do include:

• taking their kids outside to look at the stars
• pointing out constellations and other objects in the sky
• reading books about stars and space

Get active with your star gazing

Gazing up at the stars can be a beautiful experience to share with your child. However, to bring a STEM-focused lense to the experience, here are some suggestions:

For younger kids, here are some ideas:

• One way is to have them look for shapes in the stars.
• Another way is to have them find different colours in the stars.
• You can also have them watch the stars change shapes.
• You can also tell them stories about the stars.

For those who are a little more grown-up, you could try the following:

• Create a moon journal. Each night before bed, venture into your backyard with your child(ren) and note down the location of the moon, its shape, brightness, and any other key characteristics.
• Write a creative, fictional, story together about a young child who can fly into the sky… what does she find as she explores the galaxy?

If you want to get out and about to explore the stars even more, you could also consider planning an outing to the planetarium.

If you’re in Victoria, Australia, The Melbourne Planetarium at Scienceworks features a huge (16m!) domed ceiling, which creates an immersive experience of the night’s sky.

Share your activity experience

If you’d like to share your child’s creative story, or pictures of their moon journal, we’d love to see what you created together!

You can send your stories and/or images through to primaryandstem@gmail.com along with any advice for other aspiring stargazers so we can share them on the website.

Image credit

Photo by Monstera