FLUTON – Students in Fulton elementary schools have been exploring the galaxy throughout the month of February thanks to a unique opportunity available through a collaboration with OCM BOCES.
The mobile program is hosted by BOCES instructor John Clancy and features an inflatable Digital StarLab planetarium dome that brings the night sky to life through a projection system. Throughout February, students at Volney, Fairgrieve, Granby and Lanigan Elementary Schools have been able to climb inside and hear about the science of astronomy. Students were fascinated by new understandings of famous constellations and unique perspectives on familiar planets.
“I thought it was cool because we could actually see the sky change from day to night,” Volney fifth-grader Caymen Austin said. “And we could actually see the constellations and the Zodiac images that the ancient Greeks imagined.”
Clancy, himself a former public educator who travels with the planetarium, instructs various grade levels on a number of different topics. Presentations include information on the causes of day and night, the changes of the lunar phases, the use of stars to navigate on earth, and the history of the constellations since Ancient Greece. Older audiences enjoy studies of seasonal changes, solar and lunar eclipses, and the layout of the solar system.
Clancy worked with students at GRB High School and the advanced earth science classes at Fulton Junior High earlier in the year.
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