What is Stardust to Storytellers?
What Is Stardust to Storytellers: Prehistory?
Stardust to Storytellers: Prehistory starts with the Big Bang and follows the formation of stars, Earth, and life. We explore changing continents, strange prehistoric creatures, mass extinctions, and the humans who eventually began making tools, moving around the world, and telling stories.
Science and history are connected. To understand the world people lived in, we need to understand how that world formed and changed. This course gives learners time to explore those connections from a place of wonder and exploration.
We also ask how we know what happened. What can a fossil tell us? How can rocks help us understand an ancient environment? What evidence do we have about people who lived before written records? The goal is to help learners think about the evidence and build an understanding of the story it tells.
Why Storytelling?
Following a story helps us connect ideas that might otherwise feel like separate facts. Stars, rocks, dinosaurs, and early humans all belong to the same unfolding history.
The science is grounded in evidence. When we explore myths and origin stories, we look at them as stories people have told to explain their world and make meaning. They are part of learning about people and cultures, rather than scientific explanations.
Making It Work for Your Learner
There are 32 lessons, with videos, readings, discussion questions, hands-on activities, workbook pages, and optional rabbit holes.
Please don't look at that list and feel like you need to do everything! The resources give you choices. Use what helps your learner understand and stay curious, and leave what doesn't work for your family.
You might watch the lesson and have a conversation. You might read together, try an activity, draw something, or spend extra time researching a creature your learner has become fascinated with. Writing can be done orally, and an activity doesn't need a completed worksheet to count as learning.
The discussions and rabbit holes matter. If a lesson about moving continents turns into a week of exploring volcanoes, there is room for that. You don't need to rush past a good question to stay on schedule.
One lesson per week is a suggested pace. Take more time when you need it, move more quickly when it makes sense, and make the course work for the learner in front of you.