Gather Round Space Unit Review & Why It’s a Favorite!
If you’ve been following this blog or my Pinterest account for long, then you know that we LOVE using Gather Round Homeschool as our primary curriculum! Last year was our first year fully homeschooling and I found myself completely overwhelmed when I started researching curriculums…mostly because there are so many AMAZING options!
I had already been watching the curriculum reviews from Homeschool On (the blog of the creator of Gather Round), when I first heard about it. I have three kiddos and I was instantly drawn to the concept of being able to teach most subjects “family style”. It was what I was looking for and decided that we were going to give it a try as we began our homeschooling story.
As of now, we have finished our first year of homeschooling, and completed six units and one mini-unit from Gather Round’s Year 1. I have been organizing and sharing the resources that I use when planning units on this blog, but decided it may be equally as helpful to review our experience with each unit!
So this will be my first REVIEW! I’m starting with the Gather Round Space Unit, not because it was the first one we did, but because it ended up being one of our favorites this year (along with Oceans that I’ll review next!).
If you’re already using Gather Round and want to see how we went about this unit, or if you’re still considering this curriculum and want to see what you can do with it, then keep reading and see how this unit worked for us. 🙂 I hope it can be a help to you in some way!
Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links. If you make a purchase through one of these links, it won’t cost you a penny more, but I will receive a percentage back. Thank you for supporting my blog in this way! With that said, I only recommend products that I’ve personally enjoyed!
Gather Round Space Unit Review
What we did
PREP:
Before I start every unit I spend a little time doing the following:
- Order student books from Barnes and Noble Press (more about this to come in another post)
- Create a YouTube playlist to go along with different topics throughout the unit (find the one I made for this unit here!)
- Check out books from the library
- Buy any books/games/etc. that I want to use
- Scope out potential field trips
- Gather ideas for enrichment activities and/or projects (often from Pinterest!)
Remember, though, that one of the beautiful things about this curriculum (and homeschooling in general!) is that you can keep it super simple or add in whatever interests you and your kiddos. All that’s necessary for this unit is the Teacher’s Guide and Student Books. If you are a busy mom or dad that doesn’t have a ton of time to add in a bunch of extra things, that’s ok! Don’t let it discourage you from doing it! 🙂
extra supplies/materials:
Links:
Gather Round Space Unit Activities:
We also got together with a few other homeschool families and shot off a couple of homemade rockets. It took me back to my elementary school days when we would go to bridge and rocket competitions…does anyone else remember doing that??
Field Trips:
Ya’ll, I’ll admit there were some real benefits to living in Central Florida while doing this unit! Our proximity to Cape Canaveral made it possible to see, not only the above night launch from close up, but also a daytime launch from our front yard:
It also just so happened that we were still doing the space unit during the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in December of 2020 (well technically we had taken a break to do the Christmas Unit, but we were still in the middle of it!):
We really wanted to get to Kennedy Space Center, too, but with all of their restrictions at the time, we decided to wait. So that will be something we can do as a way to jog their memory of this unit!
Some other great places for field trips in the United States and beyond:
- U.S. Space and Rocket Center – Huntsville, AL
- Coca-Cola Space Science Museum – Columbus, GA
- Morehead Planetarium Science Center – Chapel Hill, NC
- National Air and Space Museum – Washington D.C.
- Virginia Air and Space Center – Hampton, VA
- Armstrong Air and Space Museum – Wapakoneta, OH
- Museum of Science and Industry – Chicago, IL
- Strategic Air Command and Aerospace Museum – Ashland, NE
- Cosmosphere – Hutchinson, KS
- Wings Over the Rockies – Denver, CO
- Space Center – Houston, TX
- Spaceport America – New Mexico
- Pima Air and Space Museum – Tucson, AZ
- Griffith Observatory – Los Angeles, CA
- California Science Center – Los Angeles, CA
- Canada Aviation and Space Museum – Ottawa, ON
- Le Bourget Air and Space Museum – Paris, France
- Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics – Moscow, Russia
And there’s many more!
What we thought
Overall, I thought this unit was great! Like I said, it was one of the favorites amongst my girls and probably one of the units they learned the most from.
My 4, 5, and 8 year old not only learned all 8 planets in order and the names of the dwarf planets but they could also tell you why Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet. They practiced looking at the moon at night and naming what phase it was in and became familiar with astronauts and rockets.
But not only that, they learned about Vincent van Gogh, got a basic understanding of Newton’s Laws of Motion and my oldest could tell me how that applied to a rocket blasting off. They learned about gravity, why we have seasons, forms of government, the light spectrum and so much more. It was incredible how much they soaked up in such a short time!
Now you may ask, but aren’t they just going to forget all of that? Well, it’s likely they will forget some of it for now! But, to me, that’s how learning works and it’s part of why I like this curriculum.
It has now introduced my kids to all of these things, and every time they hear more about it in future lessons, they will have a reference point and can only build on that knowledge. My hope is that by the end of their “official” schooling, they have so much more in their long term memory than I ever did by just studying to take tests!
I would definitely recommend the Gather Round Space Unit, either for your next Gather Round unit study, or just for an interesting space focused science unit!
Whenever you plan on working on this unit, make sure to check out this post for some organized resources to help you plan.
I’ve also provided resources for the following units:
North American Birds, Asia, Europe, Oceans, Africa, Earth Science, North America, Human Body, and South America!
Have you done the Space Unit yet? What kind of activities did you do? Did you find a cool place to visit that I didn’t mention? I’d love to know!
