What is a Leap Year and why do we have it? Find out with this Leap Day/Leap Year response to reading instructional activity in which scholars read a short passage and use their new-found knowledge to answer five questions with...

Neptune takes 164.8 Earth years to travel around the sun. In the fifth of 22 lessons, young scientists create a travel guide to a planet in our solar system. They provide tips for others on what to bring, what they see, and their...

Looking to take a trip? Why not go to space? Here, scholars take on the role as travel agent to create a guide to their favorite planet including travel tips and sightseeing recommendations. 

In the sixth lesson in a series of 21, scholars use NASA data to graph and interpret albedo seasonally and over the course of multiple years. This allows learners to compare albedo trends to changes in sea ice with connections to the...

Students explore the history of space exploration. In this history of space exploration instructional activity, students create a timeline of space exploration. Students watch a space video and discuss important events. Students research...

Space shuttles traveled around Earth at a speed of 17,500 miles per hour, way faster than trains, planes, or automobiles travel! In the 13th installment of 22, groups graph different speeds to show how quickly spacecraft move through...

Traveling through space is an amazing experience, but it definitely takes a toll on the body. After reading an article and watching a brief video, learners perform an experiment that simulates the effects of zero gravity on the...

Get your class outside to observe their surroundings with a instructional activity highlighting weather patterns and seasonal changes. First, learners take a weather walk to survey how the weather affects animals, people, plants, and...

Students study the history of flight of the past one hundred years, focusing on the invention of the airplane, the introduction of women pilots and the space race. They conduct research and then write and publish a "100 Years of Flight"...

Middle and high schoolers use the Pythagorean Theorem to complete a table showing with the magnetic field strengths in given cities. They find the average value of the Earth's magnetic field and plot one of the three-dimensional values...

Sixth graders compare distances between objects in the solar system. They investigate how light years are measured and when using them to measure how distances compare with one another. They write an essay exploring the possibility of...

Young scholars examine the three primary colors of light and design a numerical code to represent those colors. They tell how satellites use numbers to create satellite images after completing a number of experimental activities.

Participate in the 100th anniversary of the first flight. In groups, learners use the internet to research the roles the Wright Brothers and Amelia Earhart played in promoting the use of flight. They use the information to write and...

Students practice rote counting to 20. After a lecture about the planets and the moons that surround them, they identify the number of moons surrounding various planets. Students compare and contrast the quantity of moons surrounding...

"Humans have become a geologic agent comparable to erosion and [volcanic] eruptions ..." Paul J. Crutzen, a Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist. Using Landsat imagery, scholars create a grid showing land use type, such as urban,...

In this fractions in space instructional activity, learners solve 4 problems where they find ratios of orbit periods of satellites, they find the ratio of Neptune's and Pluto's periods, they determine the location of the planets after 5...

There are more than 600,000 asteroids in our solar system. Pupils analyze images of two asteroids in order to determine if they are the same age. They count craters for each asteroid and compare numbers. 

Investigate the fascinating, yet terrifying phenomenon of hurricanes from the safety of your classroom using this earth science unit. Focusing on developing young scientists' spacial thinking skills, these lessons engage...

The spacecraft is drifting too far off course! Two games help explain how a spacecraft can use its thrusters to maintain its position. The games have pupils be the components of vectors in order to create and counteract the...

Space scientists use water displacement to determine the mass of a cubic centimeter mini meteorite, and then use it as a small-scale representative of an asteroid. They figure out the orbital velocity of an asteroid. Then they use a...

Did you know scientists can tell the age of an asteroid by looking closely at its craters? This final lesson of a six-part series focuses on two asteroids, Gaspra and Ida, in order to demonstrate the concept of dating asteroids. Scholars...

After viewing information about different types of isolation, students will see that reproduction among a group will cause the frequency of a specific trait to increase. The history of prominent scientists such as Charles Darwin are and...

Students share what they comprehend about the space shuttle program. They are given information about the first space shuttle mission. Students work in groups to investigate the different shuttle missions from April 1981 through January...

Students read first hand accounts of earthquake survivors in order to begin the describe the different types of earthquake waves and the order in which they arrive. They engage in using earthquake waves as a means to indirectly study the...