While NASA says that Asteroid 2012 DA14 has safely passed by Earth. With the closest approach 17,500 miles above Indonesia. One has to wonder just how safe was it. A reported Russian impact is all over the news and your children like mine might be wondering just what happened.
The DA14 asteroid is estimated to be about 150 feet (45 meters) across with an estimated mass of 130,000 metric tons. Its flyby was the closest ever for an object this large, according to NASA.
A meteor that struck Russia is thought to have come from the asteroid belt and was in a different direction than that of DA14. It struck the earth resulting in a blast that some say rival a nuclear blast. Injuries are now in the thousands mostly from glass. Estimations from Scientists are saying the blast released hundreds of kilotonnes of energy. (What ever that means because honestly I don’t yet know, and I should as the kids might ask!)
The last time a rock this large crashed into Earth was in 1908 in Siberia.
Activities:
Watch this video with your children and ask exploitative questions
- What do you think it was?
- What would you have done if you had seen it.
- How fast do you think it was falling?
- How often do meteors fall to earth?
- How do you feel watching the video.
- What do you think happened when it crashed?
- Do you think anyone knew it was going to happen?
Be sure before you ask questions that you have information to help your child learn about the question or plan to research the questions together.
Worksheet on the Meteors
Explore the site minorplanetcenter.net and make a list of the Near Earth Objects that will be passing by Earth in the next year. Note there are currently:
| Potentially Hazardous Asteroids | 1377 |
– Science Lab exploring asteroid impacts!
– Journal Ideas
- write a journal entry about how they would stop asteroids in the future. Encourage them to use their imaginations.
- write a journal entry answering what they think it would be like on earth knowing an asteroid would hit that we couldn’t stop.
- write a journal entry about how important they think it is to monitor space objects and if they would like to have a job doing so.
– Explore Space.com and learn about a group that is trying to create the 1st privately funded and owned telescope that could help track all near earth objects as it orbits the sun.
– Using house hold items help your child create the solar system including the asteroid belt!
It is very important to use the teachable moments that are laid out in real life. I like the workksheet that you attached also.
Comment Starter: This is such a helpful post. I will visit again when my kids and I can utilize all the information you have packed into this. I especially like that you have added a worksheet and conversation starter questions.
That’s good. Kids should be aware but not paranoid.
This advice can be used to teach kids just bout anything, especially world events. I especially like the concept of encouraging kids to journal their thoughts.
This is so great! It is so important to teach kids this, and you outlined a great way of doing it, thanks for sharing.
that picture is really cute! I find space stuff really interesting, even when I was a little kid. I’m pretty sure all kids would love to learn about these things.
Thanks for sharing this is a great way to incorporate real life and teaching the kiddos…
I seen this on the news and it scared me to death .My kids asked a buch of questions so its so true to educate are children on these things
with what happened in Russia, my kids became very interested in the skies.
No doubt, no one desired a teachable moment out of this scary event. As it’s happened, my kids (12 & 8) wondered HOW this happened. Certainly, this is an astute question, even for us adults. Perhaps naively, I’d thought various military & science organizations would’ve been able to provide early warning. I STILL wonder why it was not detected.
More importantly, NOW I hope something is done (if possible) to detect & destroy meteorites. I’ve not yet seen the physical destruction but we’ve heard the numbers of those injured. Can you imagine the tragic loss of life if ground zero had been a heavily populated metro area? Too deadly to fathom….
Indeed, the teaching moments abound with all disciplines from science to math to geography to English [literature, writing, vocab]to technology, etc).
PS – I taught high school English for many years. Congratulations on home schooling your children. I admire your husband’s and your commitment. Though my wife’s and my 2 kids attend school outside the home (one attends Montessori and one attends public school), we are VERY involved in their lives and teach/reinforce all lessons. It’s too easy for kids to fall through the proverbial cracks both socially & academically.
Mike
I think many people assume that we have great eyes on the skies are not even aware that many of the near earth objects are actually found and listed by volunteers. We have scaled back our government space program and the military isn’t looking that far away for danger. It would have had to have been a much larger object to have caught their attention and even then we might not have gotten more than a days warning. Our at this point really looks to be in the hands of the civilian population and their efforts to get into space.
Thank you for your comments on homeschooling. We are blessed to know some amazing public and private school teachers to whom we turn when we hit snags in the road. They are great support and I am thankful to know them. There are solid public and private schools and I am always glad to hear about them. Military post schools do not tend to have the best reputations and from the experiences of friends using them over the years, they are not institutions we would want to trust our children’s education with. Not to mention moving so often might well have left their education in tattered pieces. We really love homeschooling for it’s social benefits. They are not secluded with only students of the same age or aptitudes and this allows them to more easily it seems befriend children much younger or adults much older than are. Being out in the world and not in a class room so often lets them see positive social interactions and good examples rather than the often bad examples some children find in schools when dealing with bullies and such. This is not to say they do not deal with bullies at all, my oldest daughter has had to find ways to deal with a few neighborhood kids over the years but thankfully it has always worked out well. I often think back to school and remember that life after school is really so little like public school, specially socially. On the other hand it has been said prison is very much like public school and the social society there in. I wouldn’t know much about that though. Thank you letting me ramble a bit!
its a scary thought. esp what just happened in russia a few days ago. my husband showed me the video of it and it was just crazy! such a shame that some people lost their lives/got hurt