There is something about parenting that gives us a sense of history and a deep-rooted desire to pass on to the next generation the great things we have discovered in life. And part of that is the desire to instill in our children a love of science, learning, and especially a love of nature.
Your fascination with the universe and its exploration, as we so often do in the field of astronomy, can be highly academic and dry, as it might be if you took an astronomy course. But when you hit the ground running at night, your gear just right, and the night sky alive with activity, there's no other experience like it for majesty and pure excitement. And that's the kind of experience we want our kids to love as much as we do.
When it comes to learning about the natural world, science, and astronomy, it's not a big leap for kids from play to learning. Exploration is a natural part of being a child and growing up in a fascinating world and space. So if we can find ways to take that natural desire to explore and instill a lifelong passion for astronomy, we will be giving our children a truly great gift.
So with a few simple family activities, we can instill this love of astronomy in our offspring. Here are some ideas.
* Make stargazing a part of family life. You already like to go out as often as possible to enjoy the stars. So don't let it be your private passion. Get everyone into action. The kids will love it and look forward to those nights as much as going to the circus.
* Make every new experience in your growth into astronomy a new frontier. So the first experience might be what you experienced as a child, just lying on your back in a landscape with a panorama of stars overhead and trying to take it all in. Go ahead and challenge them to count the stars. It's a fun exercise they'll use as a joke on their kids when they're doing the same thing in a few decades.
* Take them on a learning journey and introduce them to binoculars so they can focus on specific areas of the night sky.
* Now they are hooked and want to know why some stars are brighter than others. They have no idea they're going to astronomy school, and they don't even know it. You can tell them about the constellations by showing them how to find them by turning off the North Star. By being able to find things in this mass of stars and knowing that there is much more to pick out, they are ripe for learning from star maps and how galaxies work.
* Think of their excitement when they notice the changes in the night sky. The phase of the moon and the effect of the rotation of the Earth on the position of the planets. Help them find their favorite celestial bodies every night. Before long, they will learn to chart the movement of the stars just like the first astronomers.
* You will now immerse yourself in the excitement of discovering new things to reveal to your enthusiastic crew of budding astronomers. Revealing that you're going on safari to see an eclipse, a meteor shower, or a once-in-a-lifetime comet will make this gift as big as anything else you could gift them this Christmas.
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