Pupils from Farmborough Church Primary school recently enjoyed a visit from local stargazing society Bath Astronomers, including the UK Space Agency’s Education and Future Workforce Lead, Ingmar Kamalagharan.
With the astronomy experts leading the whole school through a day of activities, pupils from Reception to Year 6 enjoyed a packed day of learning, with Ingmar giving talks in the hall on being an astronaut and the work of the UK Space Agency.
The pupils then enjoyed lesson activities around the school, including:
- ‘Falling Forever’, a lesson on orbits using a huge gravity well;
- ‘Rocketry’, which challenged students to make and launch paper rockets using compressed air;
- ‘Space Rocks’ introducing everyone to 4-billion-year-old meteorites and how they formed all that time ago’
- ‘Trip to the Moon’ which reenacted the achievements of the Apollo era and looked forward to Artemis in the coming years;
- Finally, ‘Images of Space’ which showed amazing photos of space taken from a back garden in Somerset.
Many of the children taking part took up the invitation to come to school in fancy dress, while parents and teachers alike were delighted by a playground full of astronauts, robots, planets, spaceships and space aliens busy orbiting each other before the morning bell rang.
In a school day bursting with knowledge, energy and excitement, Bath Astronomers also set up an array of expert solar telescopes on the school field at lunchtime so students could safely see the surface of their nearest star bubbling, churning and exploding. All involved won’t be forgetting this day for a long, long time.
The children thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience with one declaring, “It was the best day ever!”
Thanks go to Bath Astronomers’ volunteers Camilla Evans, Roger Hyman, Simon Holbeche and Steve Kimmins.