Designing a Mars Rover
A couple of weeks ago I published an all about Mars post that included a video from SciShowKids titled Meet the Mars Rovers! SciShow Kids has published a follow-up to that video. The follow-up is titled How to Design a Mars Rover! How to Design a Mars Rover! explains to elementary school students how scientists […]
Fun Games for Learning About Space
NASA Kids’ Club is a collection games, interactive activities, and images for students in Kindergarten through fourth grade. At the center of the NASA Kids’ Club is a set of games and interactive activities arranged on five skill levels. The activities range from simple things like guessing numbers in “Airplane High Low” to more difficult […]
A Dozen Neat NASA Resources for Students and Teachers
On Thursday I wrote about NASA’s From Hidden to Modern Figures collection of videos and lesson plans. Creating that blog post inspired me to look through my archives for some of the other neat NASA resources that I’ve found and shared over the years. Here they are in no particular order. The Langley Research Center […]
How Rockets Fly – And DIY Model Rockets
This morning Jeff Bezos is blasting into space on a new rocket designed by his company, Blue Origin. The BBC has a succinct overview of how the rocket is designed to work. For a kid-friendly explanation of how rockets work, turn to SciShow Kids. Last week SciShow Kids released a video titled How Do Rockets […]
Nine Neat NASA Resources for Students and Teachers – Updated
Years ago I published a list of nine neat NASA resources for students and teachers. At the time the list was current. Over the weekend someone emailed me to point out that few of them were no longer available due to the deprecation of Flash. Here’s my updated list of neat NASA resources for students […]
Video: The Solar System to Scale
I guess I’ve been a bit of a space kick lately as over the weekend I shared an augmented reality app about spacecraft and yesterday I featured the NASA selfies app. This morning I found an interesting video about creating a true-to-scale model of the solar system. The video is titled To Scale: The Solar […]
NASA Selfies – Put Yourself in Space and Learn a Bit About It
NASA Selfies is a fun and free app for “taking a selfie in space.” What it really does is just put your face into the helmet of a space suit that is floating in space. You can pick the background for your space selfie. Backgrounds are provided from NASA’s huge library of images. When you […]
NASA Artifacts for Schools
Thanks to my friend Steve Dembo this morning I learned about a U.S. General Services Administration program that lets schools acquire artifacts from NASA’s space program. The program has two parts. One part lets schools, museums, and similar organizations borrow artifacts. The other program lets schools acquire artifacts for no cost other than shipping fees. The […]
How to View the Moon and Mars in Google Earth
This morning I answered an email from a reader who wanted to know how to view the solar system in Google Earth. While you can’t view the entire solar system in Google Earth, you can view Mars, the moon, and some constellations in Google Earth Pro. Google Earth Pro is the free desktop version of […]
This Is What an Astronaut’s Camera Sees
What an Astronaut’s Camera Sees is an impressive narrated video of images of Earth as captured from space. The video is narrated by Dr. Justin Wilkinson from NASA. The video includes images of deserts in Africa, Sicily, the Kamchatka Peninsula, China, the Zagros Mountains, Australia, the Great Salt Lake, and the Andes Mountains. The video […]
Three Sites That Help Students Understand the Size of the Universe
Living in a relatively rural area that doesn’t have a lot of artificial light helps make it easy to spot constellations. Some nights when I take my dogs out before bedtime I look up at the constellations and I try to wrap my head around the size of the universe. Over the last few years […]
NASA Kids’ Club – Fun Games for Learning About Space
NASA Kids’ Club is a collection games, interactive activities, and images for students in Kindergarten through fourth grade. At the center of the NASA Kids’ Club is a set of games and interactive activities arranged on five skill levels. The activities range from simple things like guessing numbers in “Airplane High Low” to more difficult […]
Resources to Learn About Outer Space
Outer space is one of the most fascinating topics for students of all ages. Whether your students are learning about the moon or exploring a distant solar system, these resources are sure to pique their interest. Planets– This website from NASA has beautiful imagery and diagrams of each of the planets, information about different missions, […]
Big History Project
The Big History Project is a free, online social studies course for middle and high school students. It can be taught over the course of a semester or an entire year. Teachers can use the teacher-generated lessons, which are aligned with the Common Core, or they can create their own using the content library. The Big […]
Put a Planetarium In Your Web Browser
Planetarium by Neave Interactive is a website on which you can specify your current location and it will show you a map of the night sky based upon your location and the date. You can also use Planetarium without specifying your location and instead explore the night sky from any place on Earth. For Google Chrome […]
More Resources for Teaching and Learning About Flight #STEM
On Sunday I wrote a post about an interactive timeline of the developments made by the Wright brothers and Glenn Curtiss. Here are some more resources for teaching and learning about developments in aerospace. America by Air online exhibit is a series of thirteen online activities that take students through the history of commercial aviation in […]