In my post upthread I mentioned that my 9 year old was going through her space science unit at our local public elementary school. I flipped through the book before the holidays and overall I thought that the material presented was fine for a general survey at the 4th grade level.
The unit was 35 pages long and they spent about 3 weeks covering it. I'm not sure how much time was spent doing science per day. The first section of the unit covered the solar system in general: the sun, inner planets, asteroid belt, outer planets, and comets - I can't remember if they called out the Kuyper belt specifically but I don't think so. Then each planet and its moons got about a paragraph's worth of material that covered some of that panet's distinguishing features, such as Earth's oceans, Jupiter's great red spot, Saturn's rings, Titan's dense atmosphere, Uranus' ~98 degree axial tilt, etc.
Next up was space exploration, manned and unmanned. The book was published in 2000, so it had pictures from Galileo, MPF (though for some reason they referred to the entire spacecraft as "Sojourner"
but that was pretty much the only big gaffe in the unit), as well as the usual suspects from the Voyagers. Ulysses even got a mention when they were covering the sun. Telescopes (optical and radio) were next, with a nice full page cutaway drawing of HST and a full page biography of Clyde Tombaugh. The unit finished up with some basic astronomy - stars, galaxies, and constellations.
Her homework was to observe and draw the moon's phases over a two week period. Of course, this being Michigan in December, she only got to draw about four phases - the rest were lovely cloud drawings
For her exam she was expected to know:
* what the solar system is
* what the sun is composed of
* the difference between inner and outer planets
* the definition of/difference between orbits and rotational axes
* the difference between asteroids and comets
* identify a drawing of the big dipper
* draw and label the moon's phases
* brief essay on why different constellations are visible at different times of year
* brief essay on why radio telescopes are needed
* brief essay on why most space exploration has been unmanned
For some reason she did not have to list the planets from memory, which I think would be more important than being able to draw and label moon phases. Go figure...
If you will permit me to brag, she got a 98% - the only thing she did wrong was label the first quarter phase "waxing quarter" - although it's not the proper term, she was technically correct
All in all I was pretty satisfied, though being a space nerd I wanted more depth. But then again they've got a lot of science to cover in a year. So far this year they've done geology, fossils, weather, and space. I think plants and animals are next.