TOWER- Eclipse day in northern Minnesota featured a heavy overcast and showers, but the wet weather didn’t dampen the astronomy lessons at Tower-Soudan Elementary.
Students did trek out to the playground during the “peak” eclipse time in early afternoon, and had fun donning their eclipse glasses and trying to see something up in the sky, though mostly they just had raindrops wetting their tongues.
“Is it getting darker, is it getting darker?” students kept asking. Unfortunately, the answer was no…it was just as grey and gloomy as it had been since morning.
Hoping for clear skies, the school had prepared in advance, purchasing eclipse-viewing glasses for all the students and staff, but with thick cloud cover, the glasses were hardly necessary. Still, they did provide plenty of entertainment for the students, who oohed and aahed over how dark everything appeared while wearing the glasses.
Teachers, however, did use the day to teach some basic astronomy lessons in their classrooms.
Students in Mrs. Horvat’s class were using Oreo cookies to learn about the phases of the moon, nibbling the chocolate cookies into shapes resembling gibbous, crescent, and full moons, a combination of a morning snack and science lesson.
In the Kindergarten room, Kristine Smith led her young students across a large floor carpet map of the United States, tracing the path of the eclipse, as the classroom digital project showed live broadcasts of the eclipse.
First-graders had decorated the hallway with eclipse paintings and stories, featuring facts about the eclipse. Which goes to show that even when Mother Nature rains on your parade, or your eclipse-watching party, there’s still a learning opportunity in there somewhere with just a little imagination.