Paper Plate Education
"Serving the Universe on a Paper Plate"

Activity: Directions- Earth & Sky

The following text was written as part of a series of in-planetarium lesson plans. Used with permission.

1. DIRECTIONS ON EARTH AND SKY MAPS: White paper plate and marker. While looking at planetarium directions and holding plate down to represent the earth, mark the directions. Draw a picture of you in the center and roads to look like a road map. Turn the plate up-side-down and hold it over your head. Do all the directions match? (No. If one looks from above, east-west will be reversed when north-south are correct .) Holding the empty side over your head, mark the directions, starting with north where north is on the other side. Draw in a sun, a moon, and some dots for stars. You now have an earth direction map on one side and a sky direction map on the reverse side. We have learned how directions on earth (road) maps and sky (star) maps are different—mirror images.

Contributed by Jeanne Bishop.

GLPA Proceedings, 1993, p. 34.

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