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Journey to Mars
My son Batman is obsessed with space, he’s the entire reason we are studying astronomy this year. For the past several years he’s been checking out a book called,Touchdown Mars!
This book became an especially good choice after our field trip to NASA and the discovery we are starting our plans for a manned flight to Mars! So, we combined our trip to NASA and some fun writing prompts for a great activity.
Before going anywhere all of the astronauts designed a mission patch. Each patch is very unique, and I got a picture of all of them together, but made a point to get a picture of the Apollo 13 mission because I really liked it.
The kids all enjoyed making their own patches, even if I made the boys go back and add in extra details.
Before you can go to Mars you need to train. Astronauts train in all sorts of ways and we got to see some fun videos of this and try some simulations of the astronauts training on our own.
Coming home I had the kids think of what they thought they’d need to train to be ready to go. Not too surprising they included many of the same answers as we learned at NASA, but it was a lot of fun to see their work on this.
NASA theorizes it will take 6 months to travel to Mars, and that is why astronauts stay on the space station for six months at a time. While at NASA Batman got a chance to simulate an astronaut’s day. They sleep in a bag strapped to the wall, spend a couple of hours a day exercising, and all sorts of interesting activities.
The kids planned out how they would spend their time as they traveled to Mars. They all remembered to exercise for 2 hours and then added in bits and pieces from there.
Once you get to Mars you’ll need a way to travel around. This is a picture of the moon rover, but they are designing similar items for Mars right now.
This was of course the kids’ favorite part, designing vehicles to ride on, and Princess added in the extra details of the rocket she saw at NASA which was never launched. She was impressed with how huge it was (football field length, seriously long).
To finish off their writing they had to write what they would do on their way back from Mars. Not too surprisingly the kids said they’d spend a lot of time studying the rocks they got from Mars or doing the same thing they did on the way in.
If you’d like your own Journey to Mars printable, feel free to print one out and use it in your own homeschool or classroom.
If you’re looking for some more wonderful space related posts check out the other Poppins Book Nook hosts: The wonderful bloggers that participate in the Poppins Book Nook are:
Enchanted Homeschooling Mom ~ 3 Dinosaurs ~ To the Moon and Back ~ Planet Smarty Pants ~ Farm Fresh Adventures ~ Growing in God?s Grace ~ Chestnut Grove Academy ~ Learning and Growing the Piwi Way ~ The Usual Mayhem~ Preschool Powol Packets ~ Monsters Ed Homeschool Academy ~ Adventures in Mommydom ~Teach Beside Me ~ Life with Moore Babies ~ Kathy?s Cluttered Mind ~ Are We There Yet? ~ Our Crafts N Things ~Hopkins Homeschool ~ ABC Creative Learning ~ Joy Focused Learning ~ P is for Preschooler ~ My Bright Firefly ~A Mommy?s Adventures ~ Inspiring 2 New Hampshire Children ~ World for Learning ~ Ever After in the Woods ~Golden Grasses ~ A glimpse of our life ~ Journey to Excellence ~ Happy Little Homemaker ~ Little Homeschool Blessings ~ Raventhreads ~ Tots and Me ~ As We Walk Along The Road ~ Stir the Wonder ~ For This Season ~Where Imagination Grows ~ The Canadian Homeschooler ~ School Time Snippets ~ Peakle Pie ~ A Moment in our World ~ Every Bed of Roses ~ Finchnwren ~ At Home Where Life Happens ~ The Library Adventure ~ Embracing Destiny ~ Day by Day in our World ~ Our Homeschool Studio ~ A ?Peace? of Mind ~ Thou Shall Not Whine ~ SAHM I am ~ Simple Living Mama
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Comments
13 responses to “Journey to Mars”
What a splendid field trip and follow up learning. So hands-on. I especially like the simulation of an astronaut’s day (at first glance I thought you’d done that at home and was v impressed with the hanging-up sleeping bag). I’m with Princess – I was blown away by the size of the rocket when we visited the Kennedy Space Center. You just don’t get a sense of scale when you see them on screen or even at a distance. Very cool stuff.
I know, it really is hard to get a sense of scale without seeing them in person.
That would be amazingly impressive if I’d done that at home, but Batman was lucky enough to be the chosen volunteer for a demonstration on that, he was so happy and got a prize of “Purified Urine,” drinking water, to take home. Which he thought was the coolest thing ever.
I mistook this post for the Science Sunday link up. I discovered my mistake as I was flipping through the other post and realized everyone was talking about the same book. Mine (#36) is astronomy based but nothing to do with the book. Please feel free to delete it. Are the Science Sunday’s still happening?
I discontinued it back at the beginning of the month because there weren’t that many linking up, and I didn’t think people were getting the return on the traffic they could. Phyllis over at All Things Beautiful is thinking about starting it up again.
My kids are shockingly uninterested in space (apart from space ships, which they do quite like). I bet they would still enjoy this activity!
My kids are like that with dinosaurs, but they’re always up for a good dinosaur activity if I have one.
I’m going to show T this post as space is one of his electives next year. Great photos!
I need to organize and figure out how to present them better, but I’ve got some more to share, I also found out about a wealth of new resources to share from NASA.
This looks like an amazing field trip. Our Ames NASA Museum is tiny in comparison. Love the printables you shared!
It helps that it’s the actual Space Center, so we got to see the ACTUAL mission control for all those trips to the moon, and see all the real stuff. It was a huge complex.
Great writing prompts! Simulating a day as an astronaut sounds incredibly fun – whether or not you’re obsessed with space – I would certainly like to climb into one of those sleeping bags!
I know, don’t they look fun?
What an impressive field trip. Thanks for sharing this! My kids would love to see Nasa!
Thank you for helping to bring a spoonful of reading fun to the Poppins Book Nook this month!
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