43
Holy Family students go into orbit
Photo
Neighbors | Submitted.Holy Family School third-grade teacher Marilyn Kuboff (center) showed her science class how the Earth orbits the sun. Jason Vuksanovich (far right) was assigned the role of the sun while his classmates played the roles of the planets.
By TIM CLEVELAND
Third-grade students in Marilyn Kuboff’s science class at Holy Family School got a unique, hands-on lesson in how the planets of our solar system rotate around the sun in October, as they went outside to the school’s playground and acted out the roles of the planets and the sun themselves.
“Our third graders have been studying space science since the beginning of the year,” Kuboff said. “Orbiting the Sun was one of our culminating projects. The children have always been interested in space, so this was something they enjoyed learning more about.”
Kuboff explained how the project worked.
“All of the children took turns taking part in the activity,” she said. “Each child was either a planet or the sun. They stood in the correct planet order and relative distance from the sun, and then ‘orbited’ it. They learned the closer the planet was to the sun, the shorter the orbiting time. This ‘hands-on’ approach was very successful and helped them learn about the solar system in a fun way.”
The children said they enjoyed the experiment.
“I got to go around the sun a lot because I was Saturn and I was closer to the sun than Uranus and Neptune,” Giovanni Beato said.
“I was Mercury and I went around nine times; Neptune and Uranus didn’t get around even once because they were farther away from the sun,” Delaney Savaet said.
“Planets that are farther away take longer to orbit,” Sophia Diorio said.