This week, our intern Melanie Zhang takes us to the stars with a simple telescope project with custom slides! You may remember Melanie’s superb honey cakes kitchen test this summer, followed by blueberry jam for Sal, and her guest appearance in our unique story time garden. Now it’s time to explore the galaxies…take it away Melanie!
I have for you a craft that is out of this world in more ways than one! I was inspired by Star Stuff: Carl Sagan and the Mysteries of the Cosmos written by Stephanie Roth Sisson (Roaring Brook Press, 2014). Star Stuff tells the story of Carl Sagan, astronomer and planetary scientist. He also once was just a young boy, looking up at the night sky, wondering about the stars. If you currently don’t have a starry night sky to look at, here’s how to make your own!
You’ll need:
- Paper towel tube
- Tin foil
- Petri dish (or a clear plastic cup or plastic packaging)
- Scissors, glue, and tape for construction
- Stickers, construction paper, Sharpie markers, and masking tape for decorating
- Small tissue box (optional)
First, take your paper towel tube and wrap it in a piece of tin-foil. Tape in place and fold the excess foil around the top and bottom edges of the tube. Next, decorate your telescope however you would like! I chose to wrap extra strips of folded tin-foil as well as construction paper around the top and bottom, then add stickers and label my telescope the “SKYSPOTTER 9000” with a sharpie. Now you have your telescope!
Next up is the night sky! Grab your petri dish and open it up. Using sharpies—other markers won’t color properly on the plastic—draw your space scene on the inside of both the dish and the lid. You can draw a constellation, like the big dipper, or planets, or shooting stars.
If you don’t have a petri dish, you can use the bottom of a clear plastic cup, or just about any piece of clear, flat plastic. For example, I used a plastic takeout box from lunch and cut a circle of plastic out of the lid.
It helps to draw your space scene on top of a white sheet of paper so it’s easier to see what you’re doing. Or, you can instead draw on a piece of masking tape, then cut out your drawing and paste it onto your petri dish! Just make sure that the tape you’re using is translucent and light can still shine through.
Hold your telescope up in front of one eye, then hold the petri dish up behind it, ideally in front of a light source. Take a look at what you see! Hold the petri dish closer or further away from the telescope to zoom in and out, or move it around to see all the different parts of your space scene.
Optionally, you can make your telescope a place to rest out of a tissue box! To make a telescope stand, cut a wide slot into your tissue box, wide enough for your telescope to fit in. You’ll want to cut the slot so that it extends further down on one side of the box than the other wise, so that when you set your telescope down, it is still aimed up at the sky. Keep your petri dishes inside of the box to keep them safe!
I also added a foam sticker to the underside of my telescope, near the bottom end, so that when I put it on its stand, it will stay in place. You could also tape on an extra piece of foil or a roll of paper.
And we’re done! Do you think “STARSPOTTER” or “SKYSPOTTER” has a better ring to it?
Learn about the phases of the moon (and track them yourself!) using this awesome, 3D, double-sided, lunar calendar! Katie and I dubbed this “the story time project of the year.” Because STEAM power!
Next, use black construction paper, a toilet paper tube, and a small box to create mountains, a tree, and a house (we recommend adding a little yellow window to the house as well). The hot glue the tree and the house to the backdrop. Important! In order to get the calendar to stand up, the house needs to be attached in the center of the backdrop:
To the right of the house is a small lunar phase calendar. Tape or hot glue a binder clip to the backdrop, then clip the calendar in place. I custom designed our calendar for June-December 2019, but seeing as time inexorably marches on, you can find a current calendar with a Google search. Add some white card stock 
Above is the other side of the calendar. First, use construction paper or poster board to create a pocket (our pocket was 4.75″ x 12″ silver poster board), then tape or glue the 
This was a great part of the story time project. Watching the kids methodically checking and matching the labels, to the chart, to the sticks was really sweet. And very science!
To use your new lunar calendar, match the date on the calendar to the appropriate phase of the moon. Identify the correct moon stick, then slide it into your night sky pocket. Keep checking the calendar to track the moon’s phases. Oh, and we also used glow-in-the-dark paint to fill in our stars and moon sticks. So this calendar glows at night!