Sunday, March 22, 2009

That's One Happy Solar System!

The sweet girl has become utterly fascinated with everything to do with outer space. She's always loved the moon and stars (looking at them, reading about them, talking about them) but in the past week or so she's become very enamored of learning about the planets in our solar system.

After months of calling herself Ramona, she's now dubbed herself "Saturn Girl!" and has taken to wearing a cut-out construction paper version of the ringed planet taped to her shirt.

Best of all, she's begun drawing diagrams of the solar system. She tries hard to get them in their proper places around the sun and to color them close to the colors represented in the books we've been reading. My favorite picture is the one she drew today and taped to the kitchen cabinet. "The planets are very happy!" she informed us, and indeed they are. Every single one of them (except Pluto, who is too small and dark and faraway for us to see his face) has a wonderful smiling face on the surface. Saturn looks like a cheerful bird, his rings somehow resembling wings. Venus' yellow sulfur clouds billow up like bright curls. And smiling Earth appears to be wearing a cloud-shaped hat.

It's hard to feel despondent about anything with such a cheerful bit of universe peeking at me every time I go to get a clean glass.

Somehow I have a feeling C.S. Lewis would chuckle over all this.

6 comments:

Martha said...

We just loved hearing about the sweet girl's planetary artwork...it's very important that the planets are happy! We went to the planetarium when we were in Australia, and saw Saturn and its moons from there. It felt amazing to see the planets (and constellations) from such a different place on the earth, yet also see the similarities in perspectives because our universe is so amazingly big. Great to contemplate when getting a clean glass! :-)

Beth said...

How wonderful that y'all got to go to a planetarium while in Australia. I hadn't heard about that part of the trip! (We really need to have a long, rambling catch-up talk sometime, dear sis!) ;-) S. would be thrilled to go to a planetarium, we know, or an observatory. We're looking into that. Meanwhile, we were glad to find the Hubble website. And dear Uncle George posted some photos (to Facebook) which he took of the moon with his telescope recently. The sweet girl loved those too, especially the one where you could see Jupiter in the corner, looking like a tiny star.

Erin said...

That sounds like a great picture! Hmm, I wonder if Pluto might be sulking a little over being kicked out of the planets' club... :-P

Martha said...

Beth, I'll have to look at the moon photos... cool! Funny that we saw both the moon and Jupiter through the telescope in Oz. -- Erin, I thought the same thing about Pluto sulking! :-)

Beth said...

Now now, don't assume Pluto is a bad sport. ;-) Not everyone has kicked him out of the planet's club yet! The jury still seems to be out on that one (though S. informs us that Pluto called her the other day and informed her he was a moon...yes, the planets apparently call my daughter. Oh, and she says Mercury sends her email!)

Erin said...

LOL! That's a conversation I'd love to eavesdrop on!