The Sun, Seasons, and Solar System

That is the title of the module from the August Book Bag 2009 that I get to review. And I am really glad. It was a lot of fun! We studied the solar sytem when we first started homeschooling two years ago, but this was a great refresher and even taught us some new things. I have looked longingly at these book bags, but have never bought one. Now I know that was a mistake. What a great resource this is.


I really liked the variety of activities. All three of my kids learn different ways, but isn't that the nature of homeschooling. This study had enough to keep all my kids busy. One of my favorites was the build your own solar system. You print the planets on cardstock and use them with a piece of cardboard to build the solar system. The twist is that the cards are blank. The kids have to figure out which planet is which and what their place is in the solar system. That let me know how attentive the kids were. They also have two diagrams of the sun. This is an observation experiment and introduces recording scientific information. There's also Name the Planets, Charting Constellations, To the Sun Game, and more.


There is also vocabulary for the unit. They have highlighted words and you can choose all or some of them. There is also a glossary with the definitions of each word. There are a couple of activities that help reinforce it as well. But you can also use the words in any other program you may be using, specially one that allows you to build your own vocabulary. Some of the words were a little challenging for us. It seemed like we had really accomplished something when we finally learned the words.


The kids liked the links to the websites. Any time they can get on the computer and learn they are happy. They like the different websites and that we could link it through the lesson. We had never really done that before. One of my favorite links was the sunrise and sunset link. It has the times for each for cities all around the world. The kids favorite was a link to NASA. All of them were interesting.

Overall, I would say that this unit study was very worth the money and time. There are activities, a book list, website links, and experiments to help reinforce the lessons. It is informative, but it is also fun. This one gets a big thumbs up from us. Check TeacherBookBag.net for more unit studies.

Have a great day!