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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