Design a moon rover

For our last big project of the week, we designed moon rovers.  The kids loved this bit of sneaky homeschool science lessons as I got to pull in a bit of physics with our astronomy work for the day.

Design a moon rover supplies

I pulled out our LEGO bins and figures and let them have at it.

Design a moon rover criteria

This time there was more than one test to check for our moon rovers, all of which is in the rubric.  Moon rover criteria:

• Must be able to go down a four-foot board at a 45-degree angle and not break as it came down.
• Must be able to move at least two feet when Mommy pushes the moon rover (I was the person pushing so no one could be said to cheat and push harder or softer)
• Must be able to hold two people
• Must be able to hold cargo in it, and the cargo cannot fall out during any of the tests
• Must stay in one piece for the crash test

Designing our moon rovers

I quite happily left the kids building and testing their moon rover designs for quite some time.  I set a 30 minute timer, and at the end I gathered them all together to test their moon rovers.

Testing our moon rovers

Unlike the previous projects this time we had some failures as I didn’t push things as carefully as they did in their testing.  But, it gave them a chance to go back and improve their moon rovers.  Which of course led to a happy afternoon of building LEGOS.

Come back tomorrow for our final Space Exploration Unit project, programming a robot.  For that we played a fun game, Robo Rally.

Curious about more astronomy ideas?  Then check out my astronomy pinterest board.  Or see the rest of this series at Space Exploration Unit.