Whether you're looking for a high quality astronomy course for your high school student or an introduction to astronomy for your fourth grader, there are some incredible astronomy resources provided online -- absolutely free.
Here are some good quality resources to teach astronomy in your homeschool:
The KLASS Curriculum is a series of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) lesson plans with supporting interactive resources that build to a simulated shuttle launch. The lessons are designed for use with students, grades 6-10.
KidsAstronomy has two interactive courses available for free. Course one is for ages 7-12 and is 8 packets with 32 assignments. Course two is for ages 13-18 and is 8 packets with 48 assignments. It is recommended that students complete one packet per week. The site also has interactive games to teach about astronomy.
This course focuses on three particularly interesting areas of astronomy that are advancing very rapidly: Extra-Solar Planets, Black Holes, and Dark Energy. Particular attention is paid to current projects that promise to improve our understanding significantly over the next few years. The course explores not just what is known, but what is currently not known, and how astronomers are going about trying to find out.
Professor Robert Nemiroff of Michigan Technological University is offering a free introductory astronomy course online. The class is offered in the form of 25 posted lectures, with each lecture thread containing at least one video lecture and one Powerpoint file containing the slides that Professor Nemiroff used.
Find lesson plans for activities such as Clay Planets, A Solar System Coloring Book, Great Planetary Debate, The Magnetometer and Windows to the Universe Scavenger Hunt. For various grade levels.
Search the educators' section by keyword and grade level to find lesson plans and more from NASA. There are over 800 entries for all grade levels in astronomy.
Take a tour of astronomy, our solar system and more, page by page on this site. Kids will learn about gravity, vacuums, luminosity, the heliosphere and much more. The material is presented in short, easy to understand ways and can be used by most ages.
The site has over a thousand videos in various astronomy subcategories such as constellations, space exploration and the solar system. You can narrow down results by age. Videos are rated by users to help select the best.
This site provides extensive links to online learning for its four astronomy courses:
A certificate of completion can be printed after doing the required reading for each course.
Watch dozens of videos online on topics such as scale of earth and sun, supernovae, the Big Bang, Hubble's Law, black holes, quasars and more.
Be sure to also take advantage of your local library and the astronomy department of local colleges for supplements to your astronomy studies.
Stay tuned for future articles where I will feature free apps for astronomy and more, too!
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