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Tour of the Solar System Review by Cindy West

Tony Ceraso
Homeschool Astronomy
856-278-6276
132 New Jersey Road
Brooklawn, NJ 08030
http://www.homeschoolastronomy.com/

Tour of the Solar System is a PowerPoint presentation of 47 colorful, informative slides that teach about our wonderful solar system. Upon purchase, you receive a link with which to download and save the PowerPoint presentation to your computer, meaning you are able to view the slideshow as many times as you like, as long as your computer has PowerPoint capabilities.

The slideshow can be viewed in one class period, or used over the course of a week using the lesson plan provided. The author suggests using it to supplement lessons you are already teaching about the Solar System, or as a replacement for less-exciting textbook lessons. My opinion is that it cannot really stand on its own as a complete study, but definitely makes a nice supplement.

Starting with space exploration and moving through each part of the solar system, the slides include clear, bright, and beautiful pictures and illustrations. Each slide utilizes bullet points to teach pertinent factual information about each topic. The facts are very interesting and will likely excite upper elementary and middle school students, but they are not comprehensive. In other words, you don't learn everything about Jupiter on the slides about Jupiter. Instead, you learn several very interesting facts.

In the end, there is a slide that includes eleven test questions based on the information from the presentation. Twelve discussion questions with answers are also included, as well as a few additional cross-curricular activity suggestions.

The tour is neither Christian nor non-Christian. There is no mention of God's handiwork in the creation of our solar system, but there is no evolutionary content either. Everything is simply factual, without a viewpoint about how it was created or is maintained.

Since the format is a PowerPoint presentation, it would be quite easy to incorporate Tour of the Solar System into a co-op class about astronomy. The unique, multimedia content will be an attention-grabber no matter how many students you are teaching.

Product Review by Cindy West, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, January, 2012

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