Week 6 Day 2 Gravity

After Gratitude Circle and a game of Eagle Eye they started the first part of a Pendulum Art project. They painted their background. Then while drying, we continued our discussion of gravity theories by exploring Newton and Einstein’s theories. I did a quick demo of Einstein’s theory of relativity with a piece of stretchy fabric and a heavy ball to represent the Sun so they could see the concept of space/time bending and how the theory explains the planets orbiting the Sun. Then we explored the hierarchy of celestial bodies (moon around Earth, Planets around Sun, Sun around the black hole Sagittarius A, Milky Way galaxy around The Great Attractor, The Great Attractor traveling toward the Shapley Supercluster, and onto the unknown).  Next we took a snack break and continued adding onto their original play. Then after the obstacle course, we split into 3 groups (one finished their pendulum artwork, another did slip and slide and the other played Defy Gravity - with hacky sacks or balloons). I encouraged them to create their own gravity themed games with the balloons and hacky sacks too. Then we ate lunch and hiked to the creek. On the way to the creek we saw an Eastern box turtle. During creek time, some explorers made more clay creations and others looked for fish, tadpoles, crawfish, whirligig beetles, etc.