My students began studying "The Solar System" in our science program.
They start with KWL, what they Knew, What they wanted to Learn, and then we began from there. Their inquiries were incredible.
The best question in a sea of wonderful questions was, "What is the farthest distance we can see with telescopes now?" The child that asked it I once taught in 1st, and his mind is so sharp. He went to the library and took out ten books on telescopes. We began talking about "seeing time."
This brought me to TIME and SPACE. Inseparable.
As you may know Exploring Space and Time is important in my life. It used to be an important learning link on my blog to fascinating student work, projects, until I was censored by those that don't view learning as a part of the process of documentation on-line. Until I was hacked.

http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/shtanzman/shtanzman1203/shtanzman120300022/12761145-earth-globe-cloud-map-on-a-black-background-side-of-the-north-and-south-america-the-earth-texture-of.jpg

If I am Allowed to say so, I found numerous videos on-line and in Learn 360-a wonderful resource provided that I use daily from the school. Some videos were too old, but I tend to enjoy those, and Pluto was still a planet so that's nice, but the video that really captured the imagination was a Reading Rainbow.
Yes. My favorite show.
I still show one every Friday- tied to the curriculum.
We saw one reading the darling book "Beegu," but what filled the classroom with wonder was a very fascinating piece on the Mars Lander Rover projects. Lot's of fun here.
We saw the engineers designing how they would get the Rover on Mars. You could hear a pin drop- I got the video on late, so it didn't finish when the bell rang to go home, they insisted I finish the show.

Let's see if I can find anything to post about it. Well this captures something we saw...

Beegu from WVPT on Vimeo.

(I fully expect this will not work.)

This coming week I'll be search out information on our solar system, on earth especially, as we prepare to write student reports on the planets. Typical 3rd grade work that somehow, in my room, feels fresh, interesting and about discovery.
We are so close to Pasadena too.
So close to where they can learn more. At my husband's former school they did Rover work as a NASA projct school so I've gotten to go to see competitions and displays at JPL. Really neat.
I wish we could encourage that at our site.

So EARTH came up. A lot.
And it was amazing what I found.