I’ve been exploring the student section of the website produced by NASA and I highly recommend it to young people. You will be surprised at what you can find at www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents. You can select the grade range of the explorer, and the content varies in an age-appropriate way.
In the K-4th grade section, NASA writers educate us on how long the current voyage to Pluto will take. By comparing the ten-year-voyage to the decade of childhood or adolescence, they have found an imaginative and personal ways to explain the passage of time.
The same web section (K-4th grade) invites kids to send in a local geological specimen to its Rock Around the World collection for NASA scientists to identify and preserve. I can imagine kids aged 5 – 10 enjoying that activity and having their eyes opened to the possibilities of a career in the natural world. What a great activity for an aftercare program, a scout troop, a family reunion, or a summer camp.
When the grade level goes up to 5-8, information becomes more structured, straightforward, and formal. Along with the offer to identify a rock (described above), there are design contests which dreamers, explorers, and others with vivid imaginations might love to enter.
As the grade levels advance, so does specific career information. Throughout high school and college, visitors to the site can find opportunities, information and contests. Congratulations to NASA on serving the public in such a creative way.
If you know of other websites that will be useful to young internet explorers, please feel free to leave a comment about them. If I agree that they offer career information and fun without any cost, I will be happy to review them at a future time.
