Thursday 29 October 2015

Great Lesson 1 : Types of Galaxies [Post 5]

Galaxies are another fantastic follow up to the first great lesson.

Since galaxies are incredibly beautiful, I wasn't satisfied with printing out pictures for this lesson. I wanted pictures that would inspire awe and creativity. So with a friend of mine, I created these galaxy pastel drawings. 

We first spoke about the formation of galaxies, recalling what was discussed in the great lesson. Next we introduced three types of galaxies; spiral, elliptical and irregular.  

Here is a layout of all three galaxies.

Spiral Galaxy

 Elliptical Galaxy

 Irregular Galaxy

We used this poster as a guide for the types of galaxies. This can be downloaded for free from my shop here.
http://thelearningark.com/content/types-galaxies

Next we looked at different galaxies which have been discovered. I made these 3-part cards for ten different galaxies.
These can also be downloaded for free on my site
(all photos were taken from Wikipedia)

Children were encouraged to pick a galaxy and research it further.

This book fit perfectly with this lesson.


Of course, the children were inspired by the pastel pictures and eagerly drew their own. 


Here is an old photo of  Noah drawing spiral galaxies using pastels at the age of 9. As you can see he got right in and even smudged pastels on his face lol! Noah is now 11 years and he still enjoys this activity each time we tell the great lesson.