Exploring Planets in the Classroom was a long-running summer workshop in Planetary Geosciences offered at the University of Hawaii at Manoa for the state's K-12 educators and librarians under the direction of Dr. G. Jeffrey Taylor. Hands-on activities in this course were developed and/or tested by the Hawaii Space Grant Consortium in cooperation with educators statewide. In 1996 the workshop transformed into this website to assist educators and resource specialists around the globe to find hands-on activities that match science standards in elementary, middle, high school, and college classrooms.
These on-line activity pages are formatted for printing and direct classroom use. The original layout was developed by a team of educators in 1994 while producing NASA Publication EG-1997-10-116-HQ (first published as EP-306) Exploring the Moon: A Teacher's Guide with Activities for Earth and Space Sciences.
Free Use Policy
This is a public domain web site. We simply ask that the original URL and the Hawaii Space Grant Consortium credit is clearly marked on each page or portion used. Please contact lindamar@hawaii.edu when you use an activity or want to find out more about incorporating planetary science in your curriculum. We appreciate hearing from you and are willing to correspond ...because that helps us help you share the excitement of space! It also helps us write our end-of-the-year reports on how useful the web site is in different grade levels and settings across the planet. Thank you to all the educators from preschool to college, librarians, geology students, teachers-in-training, and coordinators of science programs who write to us when using these activities.
How to Cite Internet Resources in a Bibliography
1. The author's name. In our case it's Hawaii Space Grant Consortium.
2. Date of publication, in parentheses. A date is listed at the top of every activity.
3. Full title of the document.
4. Title of the complete work, in italics.
5. Full URL.
6. Date you accessed the web page, in parentheses.
Example:
Hawaii Space Grant Consortium (1996) Gelatin Volcanoes. Exploring Planets in the Classroom. http://www.spacegrant.hawaii.edu/class_acts/GelVolTe.html (5 Jan 2009).
Hawaii Space Grant Consortium is located at the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu.
LINKS TO STANDARDS (Will open in a new window.)
LINKS TO EDUCATIONAL SITES (Will open in a new window.)
- PSRD Planetary Science Research Discoveries educational site sharing the latest research on planets, meteorites, and other solar system bodies being made by NASA-sponsored scientists. PSRD is a vital link for education, planetary and space science, and for learning how science works.
- Space Science Activities featured in Future Flight Hawaii, a K-12 Education project of the Hawaii Space Grant Consortium.
- NASA Space Science Education Resource Directory
- NASA pages for students news, multimedia, contacts.
- NASA's Science Mission Directorate Education and Public Outreach.
- NASA's Vision for Space Exploration.
- Solar System Lithographs. This set of fifteen photographs includes asteroids, comets, moons, planets, and the Sun, plus background information for each (pdf).
- The Nine Planets by Bill Arnett: history, mythology, and current scientific knowledge of planets and moons.
- Views of the Solar System multilingual presentation with images.
- Welcome to the Planets extensive archive of images from NASA planetary exploration progams.
- Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission homepage from NASA.
- Exploring the Moon Educator Guide and Activities.
- POETRY from NASA's Imager for Magnetosphere-to-Aurora Global Explorer (IMAGE) satellite program, for learning about Earth's magnetic field, aurora, and how solar storms cause disturbances in the Earth's space environment.
- INSPIRE, bringing the excitement of observing natural and manmade radio waves in the audio region to high school students.
- Exploring Meteorite Mysteries Educator Guide and Activities from Johnson Space Center's Astromaterials Curation site.
- Astronomy and Space Science activities compiled by Andrew Fraknoi, Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
- Earth and Sky a daily science radio service and web site with stories covering Earth Science, Astronomy, and Environmental Science.
- StarChild a learning center for the youngest astronomers from Goddard Space Flight Center.
- NASA's Discovery Program missions, news, and educational resources.
- LPI Education Resources Catalog products and resources for grades K-12, compiled by the Lunar and Planetary Institute. We are listed under "Curriculum Materials."
- National Science Teachers Association
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