Commercial space travel may still be a few years away, but the students of Oak View Elementary School got the next best thing on Friday.
Principal Jenna Landero made arrangements for a company called Mobile Ed Productions, Inc. to deploy its traveling SkyDome Planetarium near the Huntington Beach campus, enabling kids to take a 45-minute journey through the solar system.
The planetarium is actually a giant inflatable dome that can be set up indoors — provided there’s space for its 15-foot height and 36-foot diameter. In this case, it was pumped up in the gymnasium of the Family Resource Center, located next to the Oak View campus.
“One of our priorities at Oak View is to give our students immersive activities to build knowledge, experience and opportunities that our children may not have otherwise,” Principal Landero said. “We want to teach our students to be engaged, inquisitive learners, to foster a love of learning, and tap into a curiosity that will extend well past their years here as Oak View Owls.”
Led by their navigator, speaker Mario Tomic, Oak View students were taken on a tour of the Moon, Jupiter and the stars as they were positioned Friday in the Northern Hemisphere. They also learned about Greek mythology and related constellations.