Adventures in Astronomy

I grew up reading Madeleine L'Engle books--her Austin Family series in particular. As a child, I wanted to be Vicky Austin--the awkward tween to teenager who wasn't quite as pretty as her little sister but still managed to have her fair share of love interests, not to mention adventure. Once I became a mother, my memories of these books came flooding back, but now I wanted to be Mrs. Austin. I wanted to be that awesome mom who plays classical music around the house and reads children's classics to her kids at bedtime. Those things I could do and have done. I've managed to expose my children to both urban and rural life, which happens to the Austin family throughout the books. We haven't camped our way across America yet (as the Austin family does in Moon By Night), but I have taken my kids on numerous adventures, including long road trips.

Still,  I am weak in a few areas. I can't play the guitar like Mrs. Austin, so I don't serenade my children at bedtime with guitar music. And I haven't taken my kids to Hawk Mountain to sit on a blanket and look at the stars (Meet the Austins, chapter 1). To me this is the quintessential Mama Austin scene. The family is facing a death and a new person is about to join their family. Sensitive to the upheaval all this is causing her older children, Mrs. Austin takes John and Vicky to look at constellations and to discuss everything that is going on. I love this scene. I want to live this scene. But I know nothing about constellations and have yet to find the Big Dipper even once in my life.

So imagine my excitement when I discovered that Arlington County's Gulf Branch Nature Center was offering a preschool class on the constellations. I have mentioned previously how much Meg and Clare love nature class. We were certainly not disappointed by the constellation class. After putting everything in context for the kids by discussing the Earth and the Sun, the fabulous teacher explained how the stars in the night sky had served, not only as a map (the ancient GPS system), but also as a storytelling tool. For centuries, people had looked to the stars and told the stories they saw there. She demonstrated that it took a great deal of imagination to see the image designated to each constellation. She showed a picture of just the stars and then a picture with a sketch of the image of Cassiopeia or the Big Dipper on top of the stars (see examples here). Seriously, I don't know how anyone ever imagined Cassiopeia admiring herself from a group of stars shaped like a W. The teacher then had the children use their own imaginations by giving them a few stars to place on a black sheet of paper and then having them draw a picture in chalk using the stars. In other words, the kids created their own constellations (see Clare's sun and flower above and Meg's princess below). 

In the class the children were even able to lie on a blanket and look up at the stars--the stars painted on a black sheet that was placed over their heads. The teacher used a light pointer to identify the constellations. So it wasn't me and it wasn't Hawk Mountain, but at least Meg and Clare had a Meet the Austins experience at nature class.