Education

Whether you are in the path of totality or not, you can host your own event. This is a great opportunity to engage your homeschool community with fun hands-on activities.

The DIY sun Science app allows families and educators to investigate and learn about the sun at home, at school, or anywhere you go! The app provides 13 free, easy to use, hands-on activities, plus images, videos, and much more! Each activity includes material lists, step-by-step instructions, and detailed explanations.

This innovative collection of puzzles, pictures, poetry and projects is designed to stimulate enjoyable co-learning experiences between kids aged 6-13 and the caring adults in their lives. The Guide assumes little or no prior knowledge about the sun or astronomy in general, and in fact addresses many popular misconceptions.

Introduce size and scale with cut out scaled images of the sun and Earth. Placing these approximately sixty-five feet apart will demonstrate the size scale and distance scale of the sun and Earth.

Using a free app for smart phones and tablets, NASA GLOBE Observer (NASA GO) citizen scientists record and submit environmental observations to an international research database. To participate in the NASA GO eclipse science experiment simply download the app and grab a thermometer. Observations are needed from across North America- along both the path of totality and areas experiencing a partial eclipse.

Many people have noticed changes in animal behavior, birds going to sleep, cats and dogs being confused, as a solar eclipse is in progress. In this opportunity for research, you will make scientifically-valuable observations of many aspects of this behavior. Join the California Academy of Sciences in conducting research into behavioral changes in plants and animals during a total solar eclipse. (California Academy of Sciences)

Part of a larger unit on the sun, this site includes lots of activities about the sun with Language Arts and Math connections. Learners can construct a model of the sun, Earth, and moon motions, observe and manipulate the 3-D models, and simulate the movement of these bodies during an eclipse. Activities culminate with a book of all the student work – including wonderful art projects – great for portfolios. (University of California, Berkeley – Project FIRST)

Many cultures around the world have interesting myths about the sun and the moon, reflecting their importance to daily life. Discover some of the interesting beliefs of early civilizations. Compare and find similarities between different myths and cultures.
https://www.windows2universe.org/mythology/planets/Earth/moon.html

The eclipse offers an engagement point to explore the motion of the Earth, sun, and moon and improve spatial and causal reasoning of celestial motions. These activities connect familiar phenomena such as seasons, eclipses, and moon phases from both an Earth and space perspective to improve understanding of how rotation and revolution can change the appearance of the sun and moon. Use of 3D demonstrations can enrich explanations of celestial motion that can difficult to interpret from illustrations alone. Developing a spatial reasoning behind Earth, moon, and sun motions can help with understanding more complex concepts such as the causes of seasons.

This is a resource about the sun and its effects on the rest of the Solar System. Learners will watch movie clips and read a guidebook of information about space weather, solar variability, the heliosphere, Earth’s magnetosphere and upper atmosphere, as well as the solar mysteries that scientists are still studying.

This storybook presents information about the sun, including its relationship to Earth, and its affects on our planet.