When children want to study astronomy

Astronomy. Around here it's not just another subject in science, it's a way of life. I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised when my five-year-old son piped up the other day and say, "Mama, I want to study astronomy, too. When can I start? Can I start today after lunch?"

(Cue sound of screeching brakes)

Wow. I admit I was unprepared for such early enthusiasm. Sure, all little kids like to look at the moon, have their parents read "Goodnight Moon" incessantly to the point of making you want to burn the book, or learn the "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" song. Those are rites of passage for every child, the earliest efforts to awaken their interest in the natural world.

But the study of astronomy is so much more, even for kindergartners who, I'm betting, don't usually take on such a heady set of topics.

It set me to wrestling with how much or how little to present. I taught an astronomy class for our homeschool association's cooperative this past year and had a great time once I got past the shock of preparation and the barrage of questions from my 3rd through 5th grade level students.

If I'm going to present the subject to my son, I don't want to smother him with facts his mind is not ready to tackle. On the other hand, his mind already tackles big subjects -- turbines, electricity, God -- so I don't want to underestimate him, either.

It's both the joy and challenge of teaching one's own, this cycle of preparation and delivery that accompanies every new interest. Once again I find myself up late at night pouring over my materials from the co-op class, picking and choosing what can be reasonably used with a young child.

Tonight he begged me to start an astronomy notebook with him, so we sat down after supper and I began at the beginning of the story of modern astronomy.

"The first thing we're going to do is talk about a couple of big words," I said as I began to draw two pictures on a piece of scrap paper. "Geocentric and heliocentric -- do you have any idea what those mean?"

My son scrunched up his little face and began to ponder. After a few seconds, he shook his head and said, "The only thing I can think about that heliocentric word is that Helios was the god whose son took the chariot and tried to burn up the earth. It must be about that guy."

Close.

He was recalling a Greek tale I'd read with his older sisters awhile back about the sun god Helios and his mortal son Phaeton. In the story, Phaeton takes the chariot that carries the sun across the sky and drives it so erratically it either scorches the earth as it passes too low or turns the world to ice as it flies too high.

So I briefly explained the difference between geocentric and heliocentric and why it mattered. (Geocentric means "earth in the center" -- the opinion long held by ancient astronomers -- and heliocentric means "sun in the center" -- the structure of our solar system as proven by Galileo way back when.)

Next we talked about why the sun is important. My little boy was eager to list the gazillion ways he thought the sun helps us and I sat wondering how to fit the running monologue onto a sheet of notebook paper, especially since he can't write much yet and I'd have to take the dictation.

As he started to get sleepy, he asked me, "Mom, who was the first man to walk on the moon and are we going to put him in my notebook?" I told him Neil Armstrong's name and promised I'd get a picture of him to paste in the notebook.

Getting ready for bed, he said, "I just love astronomy so much I don't want to go to sleep yet. I can't stop thinking about it."

I smiled to myself because that's the way I've felt about it most of my life, too. And as any die-hard autodidact knows, when the mind turns its focus to something new and fascinating it seems a shame to waste time in sleep.

Especially when you could be flying among the stars.