About 70 Families were treated to a host of Galilean Nights activities, all centered on celebrating the discoveries of Galileo 400 years ago this Oct 23rd.  With the exception of several great power point presentations on Jupiter and other celestial bodies, all activities were hands on- just the way we like them!

Families were given the chance to win a drawing for a free Galileoscope (provided by Skeptikids of SW Florida) by completing several “stations” such as the Jupiter Presentation, several hands on challenges like guessing the scale of the solar system, coloring pages for the younger kids, and finally, making an official observation of Jupiter and the Moon through a small 20mm telescope, sketching and recording the data, just like Galileo!

Finally, everyone was treated to a nice view of Jupiter, the Moon and several Deep Sky Objects, thanks to the SW Florida Astronomical Society! Some other treats included a group presentation of the constellations and all the wonderful myths and stories that they tell, and a “walking tour of the solar system” – a 10 football field long hike around the school property, where kids and adults got to place all the planets at scale distance and size from each other!

The event was a great success!  Many kids – and adults – expressed their thanks for being exposed to the wonders of the night sky!  A winner was drawn for the Galileoscope and the night came to an end, but the whole event was best described by 5 year old Destiny:

“This is so much fun I could do this Every Day!”

Special thanks to the Punta Gorda Middle School Honors Student volunteers, the SWF Astronomical Society, the Bishop Planetarium, The Skeptikids, and the teacher and parent volunteers that made the evening such a success!

Also, check out the interview with Barbara Drescher of criticalteaching.org and check out the website.  There’s some good stuff over there!

SkepticZone ep.50

Kids studying the flora and fauna that lives in the treetops

There are only a couple dozen canopy bridges in the world, and this is one of them. This bridge allows scientists to perform long term studies of plant, animal and insect life that, without the bridge, would be almost impossible.

Anyway, I am very happy to be going to Atlanta, even for a couple of days.  I’m especially glad to be attending  A Full Moon for Cancer Thursday night!  It is a Star Party in memory of Jeff Medkeff and benefit for the American Cancer Society.  The Star Party will be lead by Doctors Phil Plait and Pamela Gay! I expect it to be a lot of fun.

Friday,  I plan on attending several panels at Skeptrack, but I think I am most interested in the presentation on skeptical parenting! Go figure, eh?  If time permits, I hope to sit down with Kylie Sturgess and the rest of the Skeptic Zone folks and maybe do a short interview with them about Us and what we are planning here in the US over the next couple of years.

In fact, my one regret will be missing out on their Mystery Investigators Children’s Show presentation.  They have a developed kids outreach program and I would like to learn what I can from them and try to borrow some of their methods.  Alas, I can’t stay all weekend long and I will miss it.

Still glad to go and spread the Skeptikids message:  Science is a Verb!

- Jason

It’s just a better platform for our purposes.  We started out here, then we moved into something else, and now, in our effort to localize our Skeptikids program, we are moving to this central location, with links to the individual chapters as they come on line!

Bear with us, we are hands on, kid-centric people, but we are NOT web 2.0 savvy.  In fact, I don’t think the word “savvy” has ever been used to describe me.  Anywhoo, we are working on getting the main site back up, but most importantly, we have a structure in place to allow individual chapters to maintain their own local sites on Skeptikids.org, and to give them their own Skeptikids.org email, twitter etc.

2009 is still the Year of Science folks!  We plan to make an impact before its over!

- Jason