AAS 207th Meeting, 8-12 January 2006
Session 67 Reaching Out with Observatories, Planeteria and Activities
Poster, Tuesday, 9:20am-6:30pm, January 10, 2006, Exhibit Hall

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[67.02] Astronomy Patch Day: An Interactive Astronomy Experience for Girl Scouts

K. A. Knierman, D.W. McCarthy (Steward Observatory, University of Arizona), K. Schutz (Sahuaro Girl Scout Council)

To help encourage a new generation of women in science, we have created Astronomy Patch Day for the Sahuaro Girl Scout Council in Tucson, Arizona. This all-day event is an interactive experience for Girl Scouts ages 5-18 to learn about astronomical concepts and women in astronomy. Our first Astronomy Patch Day, held on March 19, 2005, in conjunction with the Sahuaro Council's annual Science, Math, and Related Technologies (SMART) program, was very successful, reaching about 150-200 girls and their leaders. Individual troops rotated every half hour among our six activity booths: Earth-Moon, Solar System, Stars, Galaxies, Universe, and Ask an Astronomer, which were staffed by trained Girl Scout Leaders as well as faculty, post-doctoral researchers, and graduate students from Steward Observatory. To earn a patch, younger girls (ages 5-12) had to complete activities at three booths and older girls had to complete all six activities. Positive feedback for this event was received from both the girls and leaders. We plan to hold Astronomy Patch Day annually, possibly with different and/or additional activities in future years.

K. Knierman is supported by an Arizona/NASA Space Grant Fellowship. This outreach program is supported by NIRCam/JWST E/PO.


If you would like more information about this abstract, please follow the link to http://thorn.as.arizona.edu/~kak/GirlScouts/. This link was provided by the author. When you follow it, you will leave the Web site for this meeting; to return, you should use the Back comand on your browser.

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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #4
© 2005. The American Astronomical Soceity.