Space Day 2012 - May 5

Welcome Discovery
Family Day: Space Day at the National Air and Space Museum
Saturday, May 5, 2012
10:00 am to 3:00 pm
Throughout the museum in Washington, DC
Admission: Free
Sponsored by Lockheed Martin

Explore an exciting day of family fun at Space Day. This year, the celebration will include the arrival of Space Shuttle Discovery to the National Air and Space Museum's collection.

• Learn about some of Discovery's accomplishments, including its most significant payload-Hubble Space Telescope
• Find out from Astronaut Patrick Forrester what it is like to live and work in space
• Meet the shuttle's most famous passenger -- Buzz Lightyear

Links

NASA Education Robotics web site
This site answers the question what is robotics, features videos, interactives and lessons plans about robotics, allows exploration of other worlds through robotic spacecraft discoveries and more

NASA: Teaching from Space
Learn more about how you and your students can get involved in real space missions.

NASA Be a Martian
Students can learn about Mars, act as citizen scientists, ask questions, look at maps and participate in other Mars related activities at this interactive website.

Project ASTRO: Astronomers and Educators as Partners for Learning
Project ASTRO™ is a national program that improves the teaching of and physical science by linking professional and amateur astronomers with local educators.

Explore Mars Now
This interactive website allows students to visit a rover and a base camp on Mars. They view various locations (including greenhouse and personal hygiene) see pictures of what it may look like and read about it.  There are also facts about Mars on this site. .

Lessons and Activities

Amazing Space -- consists of web-based educational presentations for young children about space, which were developed at the Space Telescope Science Institute.

Ask an Astronomer for Kids -- provides answers and photos for 200 common questions about astronomy and objects in space. Topics include planets, stars, the solar system, comets, asteroids, galaxies, and the night sky.

Between the Lions, High in the Sky - Foster creative expression, literacy and fine motor skills as children make starry wrapping paper and a night sky nightlight.

Cyberchase - Space Coupe -- Students will use positive and negative numbers to move their space coupe on an axis and retrieve 8 pods that Hacker has dropped into Oceania.

Matha Speaks, Hello From Outer Space - This art activity helps kids use their imagination to draw a picture, comic strip, or portrait of an outer space creature.

NOVA - Stationed in the Stars -- When you're in orbit around Earth in a space station or some other spacecraft, you float around because you've escaped Earth's gravity, right? Wrong! The force of gravity for something in low Earth orbit is virtually the same as it is at ground level.

Space Chase Scavenger Hunt -- Take your students on a ride on the Magic School Bus using this activity! Students will learn about the solar system as they play educational games and complete a scavenger hunt.

StarChild: A Learning Center for Young Astronomers -- helps elementary school students learn about the sun and moon, planets, the asteroid belt, meteoroids and comets, astronauts and space suits, space travel and space probes, the Hubble space telescope, the Columbia accident, galaxies, the Milky Way, and stars.

The Living Edens - Namib: Namib From Space -- In this lesson, students study Namib through the use of satellite photographs. Students will: - view photos from space of the Namib Desert through the World Wide Web - analyze the photos from Namib and identify the landmarks from space.

The Space Place -- is a place where kids can learn how to make balloon-powered nano-rovers and pop rockets, discover what it's like to be a space engineer, and conduct experiments to identify the best materials for use in space

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