Homemade Planetarium

The unplugged theme for this week is dark so we made a homemade planetarium. First we learned about circumpolar constellations. Then we followed the direction to make a bedroom planetarium. It was really pretty easy. We used an oatmeal container and then used black construction paper and a thumb tack to poke holes where the stars are in certain constellations. The final step is to tape your construction paper constellations to one end a shine a flashlight through the other. Above Georgia is poking her stars.
I then gave the girls a star scatter and had them create their own constellation by connecting the dots.

Here is Jo making hers.

After poking through the black construction paper I had them connect the stars with a white crayon.

We went into the bathroom, the only room with no windows in the house, and had a star party. This is Josie's constellation that she created. We named it cuniculosus which means some form of rabbit in Latin.

This is Georgia's giraffe. We couldn't find the Latin translation for giraffe.

This is one of the circumpolar constellations called Draco (the dragon).

This is another circumpolar constellation called Cepheus (the king).

It was a fun afternoon in the dark bathroom. See Emmy's face! She liked playing with the flashlight.