On the night of Oct. 19, while most children were home sleeping in their cozy beds, almost 50 Hope Elementary School fifth-graders, along with some brave parents, teachers and their principal, spent a gusty night camped outside on the school field.

The students have been studying astronomy in their classes during the day, but had the opportunity for some deep learning with this overnight experiential, cross-curricular experience.

The event began with an engineering lesson as students set up their own tents on the field the morning of the sleepover. After a full day of classes, they returned to school in the evening.

Krissie Cook, one of the district’s music teachers, who happens to have worked for NASA, led the astronomy activities such as creating dough planets to compare sizes and making star-finder wheels.

Chuck McPartlin from the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum Astronomical Unit brought telescopes for viewing Saturn, star clusters and constellations. Students wound down the night by gazing at the sky while hearing Greek myths.

The morning brought a sigh of relief that only one tent collapsed during the night from the 45-mph winds coming down San Marcos Pass.

Students enjoyed breakfast provided by their parents, then headed to classes where they worked on applying their mathematical knowledge of exponents to expressing distances of the planets.

— Anne Hubbard for Hope School District.