To Bounce Your Mind Into Space

Star in a Star (starinastar.com) is a new start-up by my friend by correspondence Daniel Cummings, of Croton-On-Hudson, New York.  He has created a set of delightful astronomical toys, with easy instructions for their self-educational use.

You wear the Moon Hat on your head, face the Sun, and instantly understand what is meant by New Moon, First Quarter, and those other mysterious “phases.”

The Soft Earth is a pretty, bounceable, tennis-ball-sized. playable-with, and accurate globe of Earth, showing its countries and also the depths of the oceans.  But the point of it is that it comes with a set of small Velcro circles, and Peg People about an inch high.  So you can make a Peg Person stand anywhere, such as on your home, and by holding the globe a yard or two from a light and rotating it you understand day and night and seasons.

The Sun Tracker is a star that you stick to a window, and stickers for marking the shadow it casts on your floor each day, so that you get to see the famous shape called the “analemma” and to understand what it means.

The Star Spot is a mat you can leave outdoors, oriented so that with your feet on its footprints you are facing the North Pole Star.  By returning to it any night, you will see the North Pole Star in the same place and the constellations rotating around it.

As Daniel says, these devices are “Aha! generators.”  He seems to be the essence of friendliness, and as you scroll through his website, you never lose sight of a floating message box where you can ask him a question; it says: “How can we help? We’re here for you!”

I plan to pass my set on to a family with three children.