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Sky Heroes: An Activity Reinventing the Constellations
New activity
Participants celebrate their heroes by creating connect-the-dot star patterns to represent them.
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Participants Enjoyed the ActivityParticipants Learned from This ActivityActivity Instructions Were Clear and Easy to FollowWould Recommend
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Reviews
Pikachu, Creepers, and Captain America, oh my!
This activity really had the creative juices for my normally unimaginative group flowing. I strongly encourage the fictional hero option for younger participants or if you plan to include story writing as part of the activity. The fictional hero option also creates a more synergistic lesson when connecting to the myths that are the basis of most existing constellations. Finding the sky maps to work with was a little tricky since it is on the primary page under Related Links rather than in the activity itself.
I started off dividing my group into three teams of four participants. Each team was provided with a few pages from “Constellation Legends” by Norm McCarter (http://www.tcoe.org/scicon/instructionalguide/constellations.pdf) as samples. After a brief discussion of what constellations are and their history, each member of a team was given a different one of the seasonal night sky options, with the goal of creating at least one constellation for each season with the group sharing a common mythos.
The groups had an absolute blast, and they came up with some really great constellations. One group did a Pokémon theme, with constellations for Pikachu, a Pokèball, and a Team Rocket logo. Another group had a Marvel’s Avengers theme, and the last group focused on Minecraft (the diamond sword constellation was a favorite). Each member also wrote a story about the constellation (or constellations, in several cases). Every participant was excited to take their completed constellations home, with several asking for copies of their partners, so they could try to find THEIR new constellation in the night sky.