This Classroom Connectors lesson plan teaches young students that our Solar System is composed of many objects which revolve around a star, the Sun. In this lesson students learn about the Earth-Moon-Sun system, satellites, orbits, rotation and revolution. The site provides goals, objectives, an outline, time required, materials, activities, and closure ideas for the lesson. The Classroom Connectors ... Full description.

This Classroom Connectors lesson plan teaches young students about the composition of our Solar System. It discusses planet names and characteristics, and other objects that make up the Solar System. The site provides goals, objectives, an outline, time required, materials, activities, and closure ideas for the lesson. The Classroom Connectors address content with an activity approach while incorporating ... Full description.

MarsQuest users can launch a spacecraft to Mars, explore its volcanoes and canyons, and solve mysteries about the search for life on the Red Planet. The major features of Mars are investigated through educational games, interactive simulations, challenging puzzles, and narrative descriptions. Teacher resources for classroom study are offered, as are archived and current images of the planet as obtained ... Full description.

This interactive activity allows users to drop familiar objects onto images of floodplains on Mars to get an idea of just how large they are. The objects to be moved include a school bus, stadium, the state of Texas, the state of Hawaii, and the entire US. The activity is fun and educational, with interesting information embedded throughout. Full description.

This site, The Nine Planets, is an overview of the history, mythology, and current scientific knowledge of each of the planets and moons in our solar system. Each page has text and images; some have sounds and movies. Data for each planet includes orbit, diameter, mass, motions, composition, albedo, number of satellites, and visits by probes from Earth. Links to solar system data, a discovery chronology, ... Full description.

In this lesson, students learn the order of the planets, research their main characteristics, and explore the basic structure of our solar system. Students will also be able to explain why we could not live on other planets without special equipment. They will demonstrate their knowledge, using an online learning tool. This site provides an overview of the lesson, detailed procedures for the teacher, ... Full description.

Solar System Exploration, a NASA Office of Space Science site, is dedicated to information about the exploration of our solar system. Press releases, latest images, and late breaking astronomy news discuss the most up-to-date knowledge. The planets section has facts about all nine planets, as well as a comparative data table (for mass, orbit, volume, density, rotation, etc.). Each planet is described ... Full description.

This lesson plan is part of the DiscoverySchool.com lesson plan library for grades 6-8. It focuses on the weather conditions on other planets. After learning more about weather patterns, students research the weather on a given planet and create a visual display of the conditions there. It includes objectives, materials, procedures, discussion questions, evaluation ideas, suggested readings, and vocabulary. ... Full description.

Volcanoes in the Solar System is a Windows to the Universe Exploratour and provides information and images about shield volcanoes, cinder cones, ash, lava, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Io, and the Moon. Windows to the Universe is a user-friendly learning system pertaining to the Earth and Space sciences. The objective of this project is to develop an innovative and engaging web site that spans the Earth ... Full description.

This lesson introduces students to planetary research. Using some of the most famous and interesting images of the Solar System, students learn to focus on details by studying uncaptioned images. They increase their knowledge of the planets and their features by comparing their observations to those of real researchers. Students organize their findings to infer a key difference between inner and outer ... Full description.