A few weeks ago, Emily and I went to the Schiele Museum while my husband was in Kentucky. My friend Rachel had suggested this. She knew that Emily had developed a keen interest in space, and the Schiele museum has a great planetarium and is only a half hour down the road.
Emily enjoyed the museum all right, but not in the traditional way. She whizzed through the museum at a pace I call “Stropewalking.” It’s when you’re getting to where you’re going and woe betide anyone who gets in your way. It’s named after its creator, my mother. Genes control interesting things.
As soon as they announced the planetarium show, Emily stopped her power tour of the museum, where she’d been basically killing time anyway. We had a GREAT time at the show. The Schiele museum cleverly placed their gift shop outside the planetarium exit, so there was nothing for it but to buy glow-in-the-dark stars. Immediately. I knew where this was going.
Sure enough, when we got home, they had to be put on the ceiling in representations of the actual constellations. I’m not going to have my daughter stand on a ladder and try this, so it fell to me. And so now she has semi-accurate representations of many constellations on her ceiling. Emphasis on the “semi.”
The interesting part is that although the pack came with small and large stars, she wanted to stop when we ran out of small stars. She knew that constellations had both small and large, and she didn’t just want to dump the big ones in there willy nilly. So when I suggested we go back to the planetarium yesterday, she was delighted, not least because she could get more stars to go on her ceiling.
The Spring Sky Show was at 3, but she had her shoes on at noon, and I couldn’t stall her for long. We wound up hitting “Oceans in Space” narrated by Avery Brooks at 1pm. Emily sat upright with great interest. We hit “Dinosaurs” at 2pm – not that great for us, but we watched the stars go since they left them running. Emily listed sideways in her seat. Finally, we hit the Spring Sky Show at 3pm, hosted by “Joe.” Emily was interested, but nobody but an immediate family member would know it, since she was practically on the floor.
Joe’s good. Next time we go, I wanna shoot for a show that Joe’s running.
Emily left the show with more questions than last time, like “Are all stars except the sun in constellations?” And “Do all people live in the Milky Way?” This time, not only did she wants the constellations on the ceiling, but she hit me with questions like, “What were the stars in the Summer Triangle?” She already knew Castor, Pollux, and Sirius, but now her individual star repertoire has expanded to include Deneb, Altair, and Vega. They’re appropriately labeled, with dotted lines connecting them.
I’ve found some things online that I wish I had, like glow in the dark yarn or glow in the dark thread because let’s face it, my pencil marks leave a little to be desired.
Next week the Spring Sky Show ends and the Summer Sky Show stars. Emily has expressed a desire to go back. I’ll get out the stepstool and limber up in preparation.
