Two Great Space Science Lessons

Here are two fabulous astronomy lessons that I do with my 6th and 7th graders.  The first is an ordering activity called Cosmic Survey: What are your ideas about the universe?  This is a lesson I start out with when I begin teaching astronomy.  I comes with pictures of different objects in the universe and asks students to put them in order from smallest to largest, closest to the earth to farthest away, and youngest to oldest.  It is a wonderful beginning activity.  Here is a picture of one of my groups looking at the different pictures:

This activity can be found at this address:
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/seuforum/download/CosmicSurvey2003.pdf

Another great activity for beginning students is a lesson that incorporates plotting about 100 stars using brightness and temperature of the star.  This lesson also has some questions that go along with the graph and a couple of articles about what a star is, as well as, information on habitable zones around stars.  Here is a picture of one of my students plotting a star:

This is another great, hands-on lesson that can be found here:
http://astrobio.terc.edu/samples/chpt2_act3.html