November 19, 2012
WSGC Newsletter for Educators
Washington NASA Space Grant Consortium's electronic newsletter for teachers provides curriculum ideas, Internet links and other resources to help you better meet the Washington EALRs and the National Science Education Standards.TABLE OF CONTENTS
-- REDESIGNED NASA KIDS CLUB (K-4)
-- TRACKING A SOLAR SYSTEM (5-8)
-- FREE WEBINAR SERIES (K-12)
-- SPACE SETTLEMENT CONTEST (6-12)
NASA Kids’ Club offers educational games and interactive features designed to engage young children with science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Children are able to look through the porthole in the floor to see pictures of Earth taken from space; read about why NASA explores; play a game about what astronauts eat in space; discover what your age and weight would be on a moon or another planet; color pictures of wildlife living on NASA centers; assemble a polygon featuring NASA aircraft; and check out the “hot spots” that come to life upon contact.
For access to the clubhouse, go to
The Tracking a Solar Storm challenge -- designed around NASA’s Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph mission -- guides middle school students as they learn about the sun’s anatomy, the space weather it generates and why studying the sun is important.
Registration is now open and an educator guide will be available later this month. The challenge is scheduled to begin in February 2013 and continue until May. For more information, go to
The Aerospace Education Services Project is presenting a series of free webinars throughout December 2012. Aerospace education specialists will offer activities, lesson plans, educator guides and resources to bring NASA into the classroom.
December topics include amusement park physics, astronomy, solar energy, life in space and investigating the climate system. For more information, visit
The 2013 NASA Space Settlement Design Contest, sponsored by NASA Ames Research Center and the National Space Society, challenges students to a design a space settlement for a permanent community in orbit rather than on another planet or moon.
Participants may compete as individuals, small teams (two to six members), and large teams (seven or more members). For judging, entries are also grouped by age/grade of the oldest contestant. Submissions must be received by March 15, 2013.
For complete information, go to
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