Weird Science

[Mrs. Strutt]

Our five-year-old daughter, Katie, is starting kindergarten this fall and we were extremely fortunate to be accepted to an area magnet program for mathematics and engineering. It is one of the only elementary schools in the country to focus on math, science and engineering in its core curriculum starting at the kindergarten level.

Thursday night, as an incoming kindergarten family, we were invited to something called "Under the Stars", an event they held in conjunction with NASA and the St. Petersburg Astronomy Club. They set up big telescopes for the kids in the school parking lot, plus there was a presentation by NASA on their space program and several other activities. It was totally cool and I am really looking forward to next year!

Incidentally, the educator from NASA told us they provide completely free education seminars on our space program for any school around the country if you are interested in having your school contact them.

He also told us about Stellarium, a free open source planetarium software program you can download to your computer that shows the "realistic sky" in 3D. He did some demos and it was amazing!