Mars Activities
The lessons below are teacher-favorite lessons focused on the Red Planet. For more search options or to search by other science target, missions and other criteria, visit our Fast Lesson Finder. You can also search by curriculum standards on our popular Curriculum Standards Quilts.
Mars Lessons:
Searching for Life on Mars
Grade Level: K-4, 5-8
Body: Mars
Short Description: This lesson contains four exercises within three activities. The activities have been grouped to encourage students to think about the characteristics of life and about the possibility of looking for life on Mars.
Activity 1 -- Imaginary Martians
Activity 2 -- Looking for Life
- Part A: An Operational Definition of Life
- Part B: It's Alive
Activity 3 -- Mars Critters
Size and Shape Imaged
Topic: Life
Body: Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Comets, Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud, Earth's Moon
Short Description: This activity contains a series of images of very small things. Students will view the images, hear the information from a script, and make some observations and connections. They will see Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) images and Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) images of small living organisms and rock surfaces. Then, using their new perspective, they will view unidentified samples and speculate about the surfaces and the origins of the features in the images. The goal is to get the students to think about looking at very small objects and to realize
that observations are a great way to start scientific research.
Size and Shape Matters
Topic: Size and Scale
Grade Level: 5-8
Body: Mars
Mission: Mars Global Surveyor (Mars)
Short Description: Participants gain appreciation for the importance of relative size and morphology in identifying microscopic structures as viewed with the scanning electro microscope. In this activity, participants sequence unlabeled electron micrographs.
Soda Straw Rockets
Topic: Modeling Solar System Objects
Grade Level: K-4, 5-8
Body: Mars
Short Description: By building rockets out of simple drinking straws, students investigate how variations in a rocket's nose cone influences distance of flights.
Solar System Exploration Mission Timeline Activity
Topic: Modeling Solar System Objects
Grade Level: 5-8
Body: Our Solar System, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroids, Meteors & Meteorites, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Dwarf Planets, Comets, Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud, Earth's Moon, Europa
Mission: ARTEMIS (Earth's Moon), Cassini (Saturn), Dawn (Dwarf Planets), DSN (Our Solar System), GRAIL (Earth's Moon), Hubble (Beyond Our Solar System), Huygens (Saturn), IBEX (Our Solar System), InSight (Mars), Juno (Jupiter), Lunar Recon Orbiter (Earth's Moon), MESSENGER (Mercury), NEAR Shoemaker (Asteroids), New Horizons (Dwarf Planets), Phoenix (Mars), Stardust (Comets), Venus Express (Venus), Viking 01 (Mars), Viking 02 (Mars), Voyager 1 (Our Solar System), Voyager 2 (Our Solar System)
Short Description: Extreme Exploration -- Solar System Exploration Missions Timeline involves students in the wide range of mission events of 2008-2015+. Using the Solar System Exploration Timeline poster as a guide, student teams research assigned missions and record events such as launch and landing, etc. It is expected that students will be drawn into the excitement of mission events as they follow along with NASA's Solar System Exploration -- past, current, and future.
Solar System Scale & Size
Topic: Modeling Solar System Objects
Grade Level: K-4, 5-8
Body: Our Solar System, Mars
Short Description: Students will create a model of the solar system using beads and string, and compare planetary sizes using common types of fruit and seeds.
Strange New Planet
Topic: Modeling Solar System Objects
Grade Level: K-4, 5-8
Body: Mars
Mission: Curiosity / MSL (Mars)
Short Description: Tell students they have a mission. They are scientists who have just discovered a strange new planet, and their job is to find out all about it. They will be exploring this new world in the same way that NASA explores the solar system
Summit Up -- Comparing Volcanoes on Mars and Earth
Topic: Modeling Solar System Objects
Grade Level: K-4
Body: Mars
Short Description: Summit Up is a 20 minute activity in which children make paper models to scale of the tallest volcanic mountains on Earth and Mars and discover a big difference between volcanoes on these two planets.
Tales of ... Dust storms seen on Mars
Grade Level: 9-12
Body: Mars
Short Description: This activity details the weather on Mars from the earliest account in 1796 to 2001. This information can be used to introduce the idea that other planets experience seasons like Earth, as students learn how new data changes our understanding of Mars.
The Imagine Mars Project
Grade Level: K-4, 5-8
Body: Mars
Short Description: This project emphasizes hands-on involvement and partnership building, making use of inexpensive and easy-to-find resources.
