My not-so-fabulous shot of the earth as seen at FSU’s planetarium

Last week, we were super excited to get to visit a local university and see the planetarium with our homeschool group. And of course, this being my family, the night before we were talking about the word.

Rowyn (7) said, “Hey, I know why it’s called it called planetarium. Because we see planets!”

“But what about the arium part?” Xoe (9) asked.

“Hmm,” I said. “What do we think it could mean?”

Yes, I’m raising nerds, and I’m proud of it. 😉 They reasoned that –arium must mean something about an area. And we came up with some other words that have it, like aquarium (see, an area that holds water!), terrarium (an area that holds…terra? [Me: that means earth]), solarium (an area for solar? Oh wait, solar power means the sun–how can a place hold the sun? Ohhhhhh…I get it).

But just to be sure, we looked it up when we got home–that conversation had taken place in the car on the way home from ballet. Sure enough –arium is Latin for “a place for.” And planterium has been around since 1734!

Yep, we felt pretty darn smart. And thoroughly enjoyed our time at the area for planets. 😉