``A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured,''-- How the Penny Theater format was used to animate and present Mary Chapin Carpenter's book, ``Halley Came to Jackson'' to preschoolers and their families as a STEM outreach program

The goal of this project is to develop a program for young children (3 to 8 years old) that provides basic information about concepts related to space, comets, time, and timelessness in a stimulating, memorable manner. The vehicle for achieving this goal is an adaptation of the children's picture book \textit{Halley Came to Jackson} to a modern update of the historical Penny Theater format. The resulting ``show'' is rich in the concepts listed above, and has been presented in a variety of venues and with a variety of supplementary activities to several hundred preschoolers and their families. Based on a combination of prior research on how young children learn and careful observation and follow-up to performances of ``Halley,'' numerous findings have been developed. The Penny Theater concept and the findings of this project are discussed herein.