Memoria Press produces great learning materials, so I was really excited to receive The Book of Astronomy Set for us to use. Astronomy is my middle son, Logan's, favorite subject! I received both a student book and teacher guide for the Book of Astronomy, which is geared for grades three and up. We used the materials with my 2nd, 4th, and 6th grader, all of whom found it enthralling. We've been working with one student book, but I think that for summer (and we plan to continue using this all summer as a fun activity), we will be ordering additional student books so that each child has one to use on their own.
The curriculum is broken up into 4 units and each has multiple lessons and then a final exercise. This includes in-depth study of the constellations, the names of the stars, magnitude of the stars, what time of year certain stars and constellations are visible in the night sky, the zodiac, and the solar system. We started with memorizing the brightest stars and learning some about the different constellations. Having the D’Aulaires Greek Myths book would be helpful for this, but we have a few different mythology resources already, so that has been working out for us. I feel like this program really goes in-depth with each of the stars and constellations that we're learning about, rather than just being a general overview of star knowledge.
We actually own a telescope, so we have been doing this as a family study at night so that on the rare days it's not raining (we're having a monsoon season in Virginia) we can actually use our telescope to gaze up at the stars and see what we're learning. We can see a little bit from our back porch, but that picture of Logan is actually in the common space in our HOA which has better viewing. Our night-time pictures didn't turn out well, but he was happy to show off his telescope to you guys, so here's our daytime picture :) What's been fun about this particular study is that rather than just looking up through our telescope and not knowing what we are looking at, we are slowly gaining enough knowledge to identify the constellations and other bodies in the night sky, and that has made it even more enjoyable!
Overall, we have really enjoyed this book. We love mythology and we love astronomy, and my middle son has been dying to use his telescope more, so this hit all the high points for our family. Again, as probably most of my readers don't homeschool, I want to recommend this study as a great summer learning opportunity. Taking a little time once or twice a week as a family to use the book and take out (or get) a telescope would be a great way to spend some summer nights! We plan on concluding our study of this book with a trip to the planetarium, and I think the study in general is making some tremendous family memories.
To learn more about this study, or any of the other Memoria Press curricula reviewed in this series, please visit the link below.
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