There is a saying that “Learning Shouldn’t Stop”. Keeping this motto in mind, when the whole world was going through the pandemic of COVID 19, SPACE – pioneer of Astronomy and Space Science education launched an online Astronomy Summer Camp.
This online camp was conducted for Sri Venkateshwar International School, Dwarka from 07th June, 2021 to 23rd June , 2021. It is designed for all age groups and students of class 1 to 10 took part in it. In total 23 students attended the Summer Camp. Astronomy Summer Camp was coordinated by Ms. Heena Bhatia from SPACE India and Ms. Vennika Gupta from Sri Venkateshwar International School, Dwarka.
During the online camp, students had live interactive sessions which included presentations, amazing hands on demonstrations and fun filled in session activities related to the session being conducted. After every session, students got interesting DIY projects which involved the students into hands on learning by doing.
This camp was divided into three groups – Kids, Juniors and Seniors.
In the group of kids, students learnt about the solar system, about home planet – the Earth, the Moon and our parent star – the Sun. They were also introduced to the constellations, space rocks like Comets and Asteroids, rockets and the satellites out in space.
During the camp, in their DIY, they made the amazing models of the Earth, the Sun, Comets, their own rocket, constellations and many more.
In the juniors group, students learnt about all the different celestial objects in the universe, our home planet – the Earth, Constellations, the Sun, Rockets, How astronauts live in space, Satellites and the Curiosity rover on Mars. In their DIY models, they made the model of universe, their own rockets, satellite model, Curiosity rover, Constellations and performed various activities to whether they are fit to be astronaut or not.
In the seniors group, students learnt about the scale of the whole universe, rockets and its working principles, how vast distances are measured in the universe, Eratosthenes experiment, Celestial occurrences and their reason, astronomy through smartphone and stargazing through urban skies.
In their DIY activities, students made their own rockets, model of the universe, model showing life cycle of stars, performed Eratosthenes experiment and explored various softwares to learn about Astronomy.
At the end of the camp, students had the virtual experience of visiting an observatory and got to know about the upcoming celestial events of interest for the coming month.
Overall, it was an amazing experience for the kids where they got the chance to expose themselves to various aspects of astronomy and space science and learning things by doing.
Smiles on the face of kids says it all.