Astronaut Unit Study for Upper Elementary Homeschoolers

A Family School Astronaut Unit Study for Morning Baskets & Family-Style Homeschooling

In this Astronauts Unit Study, your students will

• Complete an experiment to see which writing utensil works best in space
• Amaze their friends with a zero-gravity arms trick
• Name their spacecraft with alliteration & write a letter to an astronaut
• Learn about Newton’s Law of Motion
• Design, build and test shock absorbers with marshmallows for a spacecraft
• plus lots more!

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Astronauts English Language Arts

Read aloud

A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L’Engle is the third book in the Time Quintet series. It continues the story of Meg and Charles Wallace, and their friend, Calvin. The themes of courage, family ties, and resourcefulness are explored while the trio travels through time and space.

Independent Reading

Neil Armstrong: Young Flyer (Childhood of Famous Americans) by Montrew Dunham Meet the first man to step on the moon in this biographical story.

Grammar & Copywork

If you have younger children reading A Trip into Space by Lori Haskins Houran, then talk about the part of speech for words that end with “-ing”.

Brush up on their knowledge of the parts of speech with this mad lib style Captain’s Log story printable from the Free Resource Library.

For more Mad Libs (and grammar!) fun, throw one of these inexpensive Mad Libs books in your Amazon cart: Mad Libs from Outer Space or Unidentified Flying Mad Libs. My family likes to complete Mad Libs on road trips. Designate a writer to ask for the words and take turns coming up with crazy suggestions to make it funnier! Even young preschoolers can help come up with words.

Use the Astronauts Copywork Worksheets in the Free Resource Library to practice grammar and handwriting. There are 3 pages in 3 different levels for early elementary, upper elementary, and middle/high school. Each copywork page features a quote from an astronaut.

Literary Analysis:

Use alliteration to name your spacecraft. Alliteration is an element that an author uses to focus the reader’s attention by using the same beginning letter in a series of words, such as the fire-fighting ferret, or the jackrabbit joyfully jumped. Use this Spaceship Worksheet from the Free Resource Library for extra handwriting practice of their spaceship’s name.

If your child is stumped, start with the name of an existing spacecraft, like the Endeavor or Columbia. An example using NASA’s latest spacecraft would be Oliver’s Optimistic Orion.

To learn more about the importance of phonemic awareness, read this article

Writing:

Learn the format for formal letters and write to an astronaut. They write back!! You can even ask for an autographed photo.

Pick your favorite space traveler from NASA’s list of active astronauts.

Then watch this video to learn the format of a formal letter. Next, use the Upper Elementary Astronaut letter form in the Free Resource Library to write to your astronaut. The address is already typed into the letter form for you! NASA suggests enclosing a self-addressed, stamped envelope to speed up the return process.

Astronaut Unit Study STEAM

Science:

Smithsonian Eyewitness Explorer Night Sky Detective by DK Children is a fabulous choice for families wanting to learn about astronomy–and it’s a great addition to your home library. This book is filled with 30 hands-on activities that explore the night sky, constellations, stars, sundials, and more.

This week, I suggest reading pages 54 to 67. There are activities on each page spread. We enjoyed Latitude Locator, Find the Seven Sisters, and Galaxy in a Cup.

Next, discover why the International Space Station has to travel so quickly in order to stay in the Earth’s orbit. Astronaut Tim Kopra explains Newton’s Law of Motion in this episode of Science Time from Space.

Ever wonder how astronauts write in space? What writing utensil works best? Use the Astronaut Scientific Investigation worksheet from the Free Resource Library to find out. Tape a piece of paper to the underneath side of a table. Lay underneath the table and draw on the paper. Try using different writing utensils like felt tip pens, ballpoint pens, crayons, and pencils. Which ones work best? There’s no gravity in space, so writing upside down on Earth is similar to writing in space because the ink doesn’t flow through a ballpoint pen without gravity.

Technology:

Space travel and exploration naturally lead to new inventions in order to solve the unique dilemmas of space. Astronauts need suits that will protect them from micro asteroids (tiny space debris) as well as provide the proper pressure and life support systems while working outside of their spacecraft.

Learn the parts of their spacesuits and the difference between an EMU and a PLSS with these resources: NASA, How Things Work, SciShow Space, and the spacesuits from different missions.

Watch Everyday Astronaut ditch his old orange spacesuit for a new blue one from Boeing.

Engineering:

Let your students design, build, and test shock absorbers for a spacecraft lander to protect two marshmallow “astronauts” in this activity from Discover Engineering.

Put the hundreds (1000s?) of legos laying on your tweenager’s bedroom floor to good use by learning about structural engineering. Have them build a space shuttle or other spacecraft.

If you feel kind of guilty for counting your child’s playing with Legos as legitimate schoolwork, read this article from MIT School of Engineering or 5 Things to learn about Structural Engineering from Legos.

There are at least 1800 inventions that are a direct result of NASA’s work in space travel and exploration. Take this short quiz from NASA to see if you can figure out which inventions were a result of the space program. Next, watch this quick video from the SciShow to learn about four of those inventions (caution to parents: does use the word “butt” and the phrase “that sucks” but it doesn’t use the f*bomb or references to illegal substances or drinking one’s own urine like many of the other “children’s” videos I checked out, so I guess it’s all relative!!).

Art:

Create a picture of what you see out the window of your spacecraft. Astronauts report that the stars aren’t brighter from the moon or ISS, but they can see thousands more stars than they can on Earth. Try using oil pastels or colored sidewalk chalk on a dark sheet of paper. Use the SpaceX window printable in the Astronaut Unit Study Bundle as a layer over your artwork to make it look like it’s from inside a spacecraft.

Math:

When the cargo area of a spacecraft is limited, the volume of items becomes very important. First, watch this video from the International Space Station about volume using Cargo Transport Bags. Next, see how much volume of packaging waste is in common items from the grocery store with these instructions.

Astronaut History

The award-winning book, Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11, by Brian Floca was republished in 2019 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s lunar landing. The new edition includes 8 additional pages of art and information. Be sure to read the “Sources” and “One Giant Leap” sections at the back of the book for some solid information.

Finally, see how rockets sent Apollo 11 to the moon and find out how a felt tip pen saved the whole mission in The First Humans on the Moon episode of SciShow.

Astronauts Gross and Fine Motor

Fine Motor: Practice fine motor skills with this intricate coloring page from NASA of the International Space Station by coloring with colored pencils.

Alternatively, have your students watch this video from 10 Minutes of Instruction Time and then practice drawing an astronaut using the instructions in the video.

Gross Motor: Frisbees were first marketed as Flying Saucers in response to the Roswell sightings and subsequent UFO hysteria. Later, they were re-named “Pluto Platters” before finally landing on their new name “Frisbee” when the Wham-O company bought the rights to the product. Play frisbee in the yard with a family member or organize a game of Ultimate Frisbee with some homeschool friends.

Complete an astronaut agility course with these instructions from NASA.

Astronauts Sensory Activity

Learn how to do the zero-gravity arms trick and amaze your friends. First, place your hands on the inside of a door frame and push as hard as you can for 30 seconds. Pretend that you are trying to widen the door frame. Then lower your arms to your sides. Your arms will float back up automatically.

The actual science behind this is called the Kohnstamm phenomenon.

Astronaut Devotions

Our family loves the devotional book Indescribable: 100 Devotions About God and Science by Louie Giglio! These five-minute devotions are filled with wondrous facts about God’s amazing creation.

The following devotions match up nicely with this week’s astronaut study: pages

• 10-11
• 20-21
• 44-45
• 140-141

More Ideas for your Astronaut Unit

Try a lapbook to extend your child’s learning. Check out this free lapbook on astronauts from HomeschoolHelperOnline.

Try a Space simulator from your app store, like Random Space: Survival Simulator or Astronauts. Or just search “astronaut simulator” in your app store.

To extend your Astronomy & Astronauts Unit study, complete the 4 lessons in the “Landing Humans on the Moon” from NASA. Click on the blue Landing Humans on the Moon link about halfway done the page to download all of the teacher and student materials you’ll need.

Family schooling naturally has an overlap between learners’ abilities. That’s why morning baskets and unit studies work so well for homeschool families with more than one kiddo! Therefore, there may be activities at another level that will be of benefit to your family even if you don’t have any students working at that level. Check them out below:

Astronauts: Early Learners, Middle to High School

Be sure to follow my Pinterest board Astronomy and Astronauts for more great hands-on activities and lessons!

Don’t forget to pin one of these images so you can refer back to it during your Astronomy and Astronauts study.