Schools

NASA Donates Equipment for Pine Brook School "Star and Space Week"

Students "learn with their hands" through telescopes, sun spotters, lunar rocks, meteorites and a blow-up planetarium!

Sixth grade center Pine Brook School hosted Star and Space Week from Monday, May 16 through Friday, May 20. All of the students are currently studying Astronomy in their science classes.  All of the science and special education teachers were trained by NASA and attended a telescope training workshop at Raritan Valley Communication College; the Manalapan-Englishtown Foundation paid to send the teachers to the program. By participating in the seminar as a part of “Project Astro”, the school is able to borrow a variety of equipment for “hands-on” education for an entire week. 


“We try to take advantage of [the equipment] because this is the only unit where we find there are not a lot of hands-on things to do,” Pine Brook science teacher Margaret Scuteri said. “We try to do whatever we can to get that wow effect, and this is our big wow effect.”


The teachers were taught how to assemble and operate Galileoscopes, sun spotters, H-Alpha/Coronado Scope, and a Dobsonian telescope. The equipment was set up in the Pine Brook School library and the students learned about and used the equipment. The students were able to recognize the different viewing capacity in terms of clarity, depth, and scope.   

Find out what's happening in Manalapanwith free, real-time updates from Patch.


NASA also donated rare and extremely valuable Lunar Rocks and Meteorite samples to the school. The students observed the samples and compared them to land rocks to see if they could decipher what type of rock the moon is made of. (SPOILER ALERT - It’s igneous) 


“Our goal of Space Week is to provide hands-on experiences and develop an appreciation of Astronomy that students can continue to develop,” Principal John Spalthoff said in a press release. 

Find out what's happening in Manalapanwith free, real-time updates from Patch.


The biggest part of Space Week is the Star Lab — a blow up planetarium. Inside of the Star Lab students are able to see the constellations, star rotation, and phases of the moon. The giant planetarium will also be utilized to view plate tectonics, parts of the cell, and Native American and Greek constellation stories, which ties in to the Social Studies curriculum at the school, Scuteri explained. 


All of the science classes rotated between the stations so they can participate in all of the activities and take advantage of the donated equipment. 


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here