Aromas School students get hands-on lesson with solar eclipse

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As she prepared her transitional kindergarten class at Aromas School for the April 8 eclipse, teacher Felicia Kyle found herself having to answer one student’s burning question: How did the moon move if it was not alive?

“That was definitely a good question,” Kyle said. “I explained the way the moon orbits, and we talked about when and why eclipses happen. They really took it in. It was definitely a learning experience for them.”

With the help of YouTube videos and practical exercises such as sketching the stages of the moon as it partly covers the sun, when it was time for the school’s students to don their NASA-approved sunglasses, they could watch the astronomical phenomenon with some level of understanding.

Kindergarten teacher Adrienne Salimida used a colander and a disco ball during the early stages of the eclipse, around 10:45 a.m., to project dozens of tiny outlines of the event onto the sidewalk, which clearly demonstrated the encroaching moon taking a bite out of the lower part of the sun. 

“The students got a lot of background from their parents,” Salimida said. “We also read books and saw videos about it. They knew exactly what it was supposed to look like and they were all really excited.”

As the eclipse peaked around 11:15 a.m., the playground was filled with sunglass-wearing students who watched the sky in awe and reminded each other not to look directly into the sun without protection—a lesson their teachers had emphasized. 

According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, looking at the sun without the right eye protection can damage your retina permanently and even cause blindness, called solar retinopathy.

“I got the students prepared by watching a video this morning about the importance of not staring directly at the sun,” said first-grade teacher Vanessa Ortiz. “Some were a little bit nervous because they said that they had stared at the sun before and it hurt. But they were happier when they got the glasses.”

Ortiz said she thought her students understood about 60% of what they had been told and planned to enhance the lesson by having them do drawings of what they had seen and a writing assignment on their experience.

“Every teacher is doing grade-level-appropriate science lessons that are aligned to the Next Generation science standards and really teach science through phenomena,” said Curriculum and Instruction Director Jivan Dhaliwal. “This is the perfect example of getting kids outside and looking at what’s actually happening in nature.”

But for most of the students, the science behind the eclipse seemed second place to the chance to see something so unusual.

“It looks, it looks pretty cool,” said seventh-grader Kono Capuano. “It’s like the sun is being blacked out. It’s super rare and awesome.”

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