Onto mission 2 of the space challenge which is about space weather.
Firstly, we watched Mission 2 introduction video from Jon. Both girls are enjoying these videos 🙂
Science
What is space weather?
We decided to do this as a document this time to make a change and to use the PC. We used the suggested NASA space weather page for the information on this question. We found images to paste into the document and Elsa wrote in her own words about it.
Among other things, we found out:
- what the sun is made of;
- what causes the northern lights;
- what a solar flare is;
- how the space weather affects the earth and equipment here.
We watched a couple of interesting videos, one to do with the telescopes taking images of the weather in space and a brilliant National Geographic one on Aurora Borealis (northern lights).
Mission 2 Part 1 Complete
Maths
Sunspots
We talked about what sunspots were and looked at some images online of what they look like. Then we looked at and chatted about the data for the mission. I discussed with Elsa what she needed to do with it.
- find the errors in the data.
- choose 3 facts about the data (highest, lowest, total number over the 10 years she chose).
- choose 10 years to study and create into a chart.
- write 2 questions about her data for someone else to answer. 🙂
Mission 2 Part 2 Complete
English
Present information about space weather and sunspots to your peers (dad).
Elsa decided that the best way to do this, (after a discussion with other HE children doing this challenge), was by creating a PowerPoint presentation. I asked her to think about what she felt was important to tell him then suggested pictures and bullet points to remind her what to say. I said that he may have questions to ask her during and after the talk, so she should be sure she had covered as much as she could initially, but I did say I would give her key words to remind her of the information if he asked her something she couldn’t answer.
She created 4 slides and searched for relevant pictures and remembered information from the previous 2 tasks. When Daddy got back from work she asked him to sit down and started to talk about:
- what space weather is.
- how it affects those on earth and on the ISS.
- what protection is available.
- how we can predict it.
- what sunspots are.
Dad asked her a few questions which she was able to answer without my help. 🙂
She did really well.
Mission 2 Part 3 Complete
Elsa’s work has been uploaded and she has been awarded with her badge.
We are talking the era of the early ZX Spectrum, Atari 2600, that kind of thing. At that time, nobody outside of the military or science establishment (people like Sir Tim Berners-Lee) would have known what the internet was. In fact, it was probably still called ‘Interconnected Network’ or something. 
With my Home School hat on, the first point I want to make here is that I learned about computers in spite of the state school system and not as a result of it. Now we are home-schooling our children I find it very telling that the foundation of my career is based upon an investment that happened by my parents in our home and is most certainly not something that happened as a result of attending any school.
