Hudsonhubtimes.com - Freeman of the Press: A view from inside the Earth

by Laura Freeman, reporter

Geography was not my favorite subject in school, but I know I would have enjoyed it a lot more with an inflatable "globe" like the one at Ellsworth Hill Elementary.

The Earth Balloon is 22-feet wide, 22-feet high and provided by the Global Issues Resource Center at Cuyahoga Community College through the Earth Trek Program and Earth Awareness Portable Classroom.

The Hudson City School District received a grant from the Burton D. Morgan Foundation to bring the Earth Balloon to Ellsworth from March 9 to 11.

The globe is a great way to enhance the curriculum, Ellsworth Principal Lisa Hunt said.

"The Earth Balloon will allow our students to get a more accurate picture of its size, shape and relationships between the bodies of water and continents," Hunt said prior to the balloon's visit. "In addition, our students will get a better sense of their relation to the world and what they can do to treat the Earth responsibly and with great care."

I was there to take some photographs of the huge balloon set up in the gymnasium for 480 students. They learned about the Earth and then got to go inside it.

Fran Moore's second-grade class arrived to learn about the planets and Earth from former school teacher Peg Ames, who uses the Earth Balloon and smaller props for the portable classroom lessons.

Ames taught for more than 39 years in Berea and Solon and loved science.

Moore picked students to dress up as the sun and 11 planets.

That's right -- 11 planets. I haven't kept up since Pluto was rejected as a planet and didn't know that not only is Pluto back on the list as a dwarf planet, but two more dwarf planets had been added to our solar system. They include Ceres in the asteroid belt and Eris, bigger and beyond Pluto.

After learning about rotation and revolving, the students were ready to study the globe that reached from floor to ceiling.

Ames pointed out the continents, major cities and oceans.

Then we got to go inside. Everyone had to remove their shoes, and we sat around Antarctica and looked up at the different continents and oceans above us.

Ames explained that the globe was made from photographs taken from outer space, which explained the clouds.

She talked about the melting ice cap in the Arctic and other changes caused by pollution.

I'm sure some parents who don't believe in global warming will protest, but she simply encouraged students to practice conservation and recycling.

Ames said kids can learn when they hear and see something, but they really learn when they are part of it.

And as a special note for parents of students in Mrs. Moore's class: They were very well behaved.

E-mail: lfreeman@recordpub.com

Phone: 330-688-0088 ext. 3150

1.	Posted by laurele March 17, 2010
	Pluto's status has been in limbo since 2006, when four percent of the IAU decreed that dwarf planets are not planets. Their decision was opposed by hundreds of professional astronomers in a formal petition led by New Horizons Principal Investigator Dr. Alan Stern. Stern and like-minded scientists favor a broader planet definition that includes any non-self-luminous spheroidal body in orbit around a star. The spherical part is important because objects become spherical when they attain a state known as hydrostatic equilibrium, meaning they are large enough for their own gravity to pull them into a round shape. This is a characteristic of planets and not of shapeless asteroids and Kuiper Belt Objects. Pluto meets this criterion and is therefore a planet. Using this broader definition gives our solar system 13 planets and counting: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris.