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Dr. Maggie’s Grand Tour of the Solar System

6th October 2019      Sarah Burns      1 Comment

Dr Maggies Grand Tour of the solar system

AD | Gifted

Space is one of those topics that we seem to dip in and out of at various stages across the year; sometimes we do an indepth study and at other times the children just suddenly take a real fascination with it.

I find that this time of year, when the nights start to draw in earlier, the children find a renewed sense of wonder about the world beyond Earth, and I think this is because the moon is much more a regular, visible presence. There is something magical to me as a 30 something to see the moon glowing brightly above and noting its changing shape as the days go by.

We recieved a copy of Dr Maggie’s Grand Tour of the Solar System a few weeks back and I’ve been really impressed. Written by the real life Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock (MBE) it takes children on an awe inpsiring tour of the solar system our planet sits within.

The format of the book

Dr Maggie’s Tour is a sturdy hardback book that is an absolute visual feast. Space is a *really* hard topic to explain and do so in a way that really engages children. We have any number of books about space and I find it’s a really hard topic to keep the children engaged with.

This book is clearly written by someone adept at presenting the subject matter to children and its clever use of a photographs mixed with drawings as well as snippets of facts and figures make is a really accessible book.

Dr Maggies Grand Tour of the solar system

How we have used it

The children have been taking a look through this book, and Daniel has been particulalry engaged – the moon landing anniversary and a particulalry excellent children’s biography of Neil Armstrong has kept him interested in the subject the last few months. We looked at this book alongside the learning resources that MOM books have made available and we talked about space travel and how the planets we visit might differ to our own.

The children have recently been learning about the Earth and it’s structure so it was interesting to get them thinking about how Mars and Jupiter might differ; do they too have and inner core and crust or do they think it might something else? What clues could they find?

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Today we started a new earth sciences curriculum which we are doing with a friend. Today was about the layers of the earth and we made these playdoh models as well an experiment with an egg an the first stage of our lapbooks. The rest of the day we did library visits, handwriting, maths, more playdoh and some work on the geography fair project for Friday. Daniel is now at Beavers and I'm heading home to help out other two to bed and prep for tomorrow before a short run and some work. Busy start to the week for us

A post shared by Sarah (@mssburns) on Sep 16, 2019 at 10:34am PDT

Overall Thoughts

This is a clever little book and possibly only the second space themed book I have seen that features a non-white character (the other one is Ando Twin’s Astronaut book which is aimed at a much younger audience) so it’s nice to see an excellent resource book like this written by and featuring a non-white lead character.

I like the journey that you take through this book and I really like the page at the back which features details of some of the lesser known pioneers of space; I think we might do a speaking and listening group on ‘usung heroes’ and we might include some of these people in our project.

Dr Maggies Grand Tour of the solar system

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About Sarah Burns

I am Sarah, home educating mum of three (born 2012, 2014 and 2016)

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Comments

  1. Justine Laismith says

    7th October 2019 at 20:00

    This post is timely for Space Week next week!

    Reply

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Hello & Welcome!

Hello and welcome to my little corner of the internet. I'm Sarah, mum to three children (Oct 2012, Feb 2014 & June 2016). We are a home educating family based in Greater Manchester. Here I share about our Home Ed journey, days out, books and activities and well as my quest to stay sane by running and hitting the gym!

You can contact me on any of the social networks linked below or by email to sarah@letthembesmall.com

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