Homeschool Afternoon: Space Exploration

Homeschool Afternoon is a new assignment for me this semester, so for the first one, I knew that I wanted to do something that I really, really love.  My dad teaches industrial arts and space technology, so I have grown up hearing about the space shuttle and table saws.  Since it wasn't very feasible to have K-6 students build a wood project, I decided to go with space exploration  :)   In my initial research for the program, I was overwhelmed with all the directions we could go.  In the end, I decided to focus specifically on Apollo 11 and the Saturn V rocket.

We started off by reading from a few picture books about the astronauts involved in the Apollo 11 mission.  "One Giant Leap" was where we got the majority of our information.

After reading, I had a "2 Truths and a Lie" game prepared for them.  All the information in the game could be remembered from the picture book material that we read together.

Originally, I had a Saturn V launch video embedded in my Powerpoint, but the video wasn't working, so I didn't get to show that.

The following infographic was the inspiration for a human Saturn V demonstration:



I assigned 20 people to different parts of the rocket, as follows:
5 F-1 rocket engines
Stage 1
5 J-2 rocket engines
Stage 2
1 J-2 rocket engine
Stage 4
Lunar Module
Escape rocket
Lunar module
3 astronauts
(If your attendance is lower, you can use less people for the rocket engines and the astronauts can also be the lunar module)

Using the steps from the infographic, I instructed the students to fire up and fall into the Atlantic Ocean (a large trap) at the appropriate time.  The rocket engines got to eat fruit snacks for fuel before they launched their stage.  I wish I would have snapped some pictures of this, but I was too busy trying to get everyone organized and doing their part.

As referenced here, we try and do a collaborative project for each Homeschool Afternoon, so we ended up with an "orbiting challenge." I divided the students into 2 groups, making sure to have littles in each group and the oldest kids in each group.  Each group had a bucket, a rolling stool, and 5 wadded-up paper balls. They started by putting the youngest kid on the team on the stool, trying to make as many of the 5 balls into the bucket as they could.  Then we spun them on the stool in a circular "orbit," again challenging them to make the balls in the bucket.  There are many variations of this activity that you could do, challenging the older kids to try more difficult orbits or faster orbits, etc.

How did it go?
I believe we had 35-40 students in attendance, which was unexpected, but worked out really well.  I wish I would have scanned the books into the Powerpoint, because they had trouble seeing the illustrations.  The Saturn V rocket demonstration was difficult to navigate, but really paid off.  They loooooved the orbiting challenge.