For our culminating activity of our study of astronomy, the Navigators imagineered a colony on Mars that would sustain life. Our classroom was abuzz for weeks as we developed a place where we could survive and thrive.
Official name: The Navigators' Mars Colony
(rockets in the background and hanging all over from our ceiling!)
A glue gun and an Exacto knife were essential tools.
We reused things from the MakerSpace in innovative ways.
This building had a solar panel, a control panel, a water heater, a gravity lock, a person tester/scanner and lots of decorations.
Some things needed to be protected from the Mars' atmosphere.
Starbucks coffee lids did the job perfectly.
Note the beautiful windows and door.
It was part of this hotel for visitors who come to Mars.
It even had a water slide and pool.
This was an automatic egg collector and a greenhouse to grow crops.
We had a diner...
...a water supply company...
...and a street sweeper for the road that connected our businesses and homes.
This boy made many of the things above plus a Mars School, a fruit shop, a sweet shop, and a UFO. Future city planner?
We also had a shopping mall that had everything - a movie theater,
a place to have your nails done, clothing stores, an arcade - you name it, this mall had it.
This was a space agency and an electric company. It had lots of wires, a playground with a trampoline, a gigantic telescope, and a rocket launcher. He also built a grocery store and a space suit tester and was in the process of testing a suit for Neptune and for Venus.
We decided we would need a lot of electricity. Here's another power company.
It doubled as a home with a garage and a rocket launch pad. It had solar panels, street lights (Q-tips with a pompom on top), an airlock, airtight tubes to connect the buildings, a fuel storage tank, and a greenhouse out back.
Bigger was better for this boy. Inside was another backup rocket just in case the outer rocket had something go wrong. It also had a hatch that opened to a large storage area. In it was a satellite with a solar panel that could light up an entire city. It also had a green house that had pipes bringing water in from underneath Mars' surface.
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A lot of imagination, innovation, knowledge, engineering, and glue went into each student's project and together we made a fantastic place to survive and thrive.
Someday, some of these bright students might look back to Earth and remember how they dreamed of moving to Mars.
Will they remember sitting on the edge of their seats as they watched the Mars Perseverance Rover Landing?
Will they remember cheering and drawing a picture of it?
Will they remember the student-led discussions they had of black holes, momentum, orbits, rocket stages, jet propulsion, thrust, asteroids, comets, lunar rovers, oort clouds, galaxies, supernovas....
