Colours of the Stars at Bel Ayr Schoolby Dave Chapman, Halifax CentreOn January 27, I presented "The Colours of the Stars" to 44 Grade 6 students at Bel Ayr School in Dartmouth. The week before, I gave them some prep work to do: several questions about stars to warm them up. I also had them make 6 large paper disks with different star names and colours: Aldebaren (orange), Betelgeuse (red), Procyon (light yellow), Rigel (blue), Capella (yellow), Sirius (white). These are the 6 brightest winter stars at our latitude. I also had them make up some spectral class labels: K, M, F, B, G, A; and temperatures: 4200 K, 3500 K, 6600 K, 11000 K, 5000 K, 10000 K. It is interesting that the 6 brightest winter stars each have different spectral classes.In class, I told them a little about IYA and Galileo and his use of the telescope. I had them report their researched answers to my warm up questions. Then I had them line up with the "stars" in order of brightness. From a table I supplied, I had them stick the right letters and numbers on the stars, and then got to them to reorder themselves in terms of decreasing temperature, revealing the well-known order: Be A Fine Girl/Guy Kiss Me. The basic idea was to understand that stars have different temperatures and astronomers figure this out by examining the colours of the stars.After that, I handed out the RASC IYA StarFinders and they assembled them. I also had several postcard-sized prints of Blair MacDonald's fine picture of Orion. They easily picked out the blue star (Rigel) and the red star (Beteleguse). I showed them how to dial up 8 p.m. on January 27 to simulate the night sky. They figured out how to find Orion and I showed them how to find Rigel, Betelgeuse, Sirius, Aldebaran, Procyon, and Capella, all starting from Orion. Since it looked like it would be clear that night, I hoped they'd get a chance to test it out! All six stars are named on the StarFinder.Then we had a Q&A session that, surprisingly, dealt with only planets and moons. I think perhaps that is what they had been studying in their Grade 6 unit. We discussed the demotion of Pluto to dwarf planet, and discussed life on Mars. We discussed why scientists apparently only look for earth-like life forms. Very good questions.At the end of the presentation, I shuffled a deck of astro-cards and dealt them out, one to each student. There was a bit of a scrum, and I noticed some horse-trading going on. Galaxies were popular! I told them they could collect more by attending more events put on by Astronomy Nova Scotia (ANS).The teachers sent home an ANS brochure with each student, and I gave the school two copies of "Mary Lou's New Telescope" for their library. One student came up at the very end and said he and his dad have a telescope at home and use it, so I gave him one of the "Sidewalk Astronomy" booklets.