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Normalizing the Universe
Hello all, first post! I have a son who is 14 months… so way under 6. My wife and I have started by teaching him nouns and being very consistent. One of the nouns I have taught him is the Star. I don’t use the word Sun. Whenever we read a book and the Sun is there, I call it a Star. And of course the ‘regular’ Stars we also call Stars. Now when we are outside and I ask him where the star is, he points to the Sun. When I ask him where the moon is, he will look around and point to it.
My point is… maybe humans would have a deeper appreciation for humanity and Earth if they looked at the sky as not just a flat surface with bright dots on it, but rather a neighborhood of objects that WE are a part of. How else can we normalize the universe?
Another way I have thought is looking at the stars at night and being able to say… that one has 5 planets around it. That one has 9 planets. Seriously, does anyone know how many of the stars at night have planets around them? Is it none, are planets that rare? Is it all of them?
Another easy thing for children is pointing out the planets. They are very obvious at dusk (or dawn). Maybe even mapping them every couple nights to see how they move.
A few other points that I think normalize the universe…
-everyone on Earth sees the same moon each day. When its a full money in the USA, it is a full moon in China.
-every light you can see in the night sky with naked eye (except 1) is within our galaxy. We are really only looking within our local neighborhood.
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this is a pretty cool perspective !! thanks for sharing 🙂
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Thank you for sharing, I will definitely do this with my niece and nephew ????
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What will you do when the time comes to learn about the sociohistoric context of the sun?
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What is the sociohistoric context of the sun? That sounds very anthropocentric.
Normalizing the universe is about dislodging the cultural context from the universe and thus conceptualizing the players and processes for what they are and how they relate.
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