Our boys have been home schooled for the last couple of years. The bulk of the teaching duties over those years have fallen on the the Librarian’s shoulders because I work full time. I have provided the occasional pearls of wisdom but I wanted to provide more even if the Game Guru’s eyes glaze over at the prospect. With that in mind I asked the Librarian to organize an astronomy night which she did a few weeks ago.

Several people in the Librarian’s home schooling network professed interest but as the night in question – tonight – approached it became obvious that it was going to be a much smaller group. This turned out to be a good thing because the children were very young.

The kids were initially excited about the telescope, an 8” reflector on a Dobsonian mount, but quickly became more interested in chasing each other around the park. Only Master Builder who, at ten years old, was the oldest child remained interested in the sky. Unfortunately Saturn rose relatively late so the kids looked at the Moon first. After the awe of seeing the craters and “seas” on the Moon everything else was an anticlimax. They even claimed that Saturn, with its edge on rings, was just a dot even though it appears as a small disk in a telescope.

The adults were more enthusiastic. They kept coming back for repeated views and we all enjoyed talking about our experiences with home schooling.

The Librarian and I promised the group that we would set up a few more sessions during the year. Ideally this will be during winter when the sky darkens at an earlier hour and the atmosphere is clearer. Looking forward to it.