Week 3 of the UNSA missions and this week is about food and exercise on the ISS.

Firstly, as usual, it was watching the introduction video with Jon. We always find these funny in our house.

Science

What would Tim need to eat before doing a spacewalk (EVA – Extra Vehicular Activity)

We looked at the table of food we needed to download and finally (again after a grumble to HE friends about not being able to make a 4000 kcal meal) worked out that you only needed to do an extra meal on top of 2500 kcal day for Tim if he was to do an EVA).

Elsa watched a video of Tim talking about his favourite foods and also a video of Samantha talking about snacks on board too. After watching these she chose a meal that she hoped Tim would like. (Loads of chocolate and tea) :).  She labelled it with the number of calories per item of food.

  

Mission 3 Part 1 Complete

Maths

Using the table of food provided, work out how much Tim’s meal would cost:

• per meal
• once a week for 6 weeks
• once a week for 6 months (24 weeks)

   

Mission 3 Part 2 Complete

English

Persuade UNSA’s Head Chef to choose your meal.

Elsa had to decide why her meal was better than anyone else’s and to try and persuade the head chef to choose it.  She wrote her own text then did a talk to us about it.

Elsa work has uploaded her work and she has been awarded with her badge.

What was nice about after completing this mission, Elsa received an extra badge which was a surprise when she next logged into Makewaves. 🙂

Onto mission 2 of the space challenge which is about space weather.

Firstly, we watched Mission 2 introduction video from Jon.  Both girls are enjoying these videos 🙂

Science

What is space weather?

We decided to do this as a document this time to make a change and to use the PC.  We used the suggested NASA space weather page for the information on this question. We found images to paste into the document and Elsa wrote in her own words about it.

Among other things, we found out:

• what the sun is made of;
• what causes the northern lights;
• what a solar flare is;
• how the space weather affects the earth and equipment here.

We watched a couple of interesting videos, one to do with the telescopes taking images of the weather in space and a brilliant National Geographic one on Aurora Borealis (northern lights).

 

Mission 2 Part 1 Complete

Maths

Sunspots

We talked about what sunspots were and looked at some images online of what they look like. Then we looked at and chatted about the data for the mission.  I discussed with Elsa what she needed to do with it.

• find the errors in the data.
• choose 3 facts about the data (highest, lowest, total number over the 10 years she chose).
• choose 10 years to study and create into a chart.
• write 2 questions about her data for someone else to answer. 🙂

 

Mission 2 Part 2 Complete

English

Present information about space weather and sunspots to your peers (dad).

Elsa decided that the best way to do this, (after a discussion with other HE children doing this challenge), was by creating a PowerPoint presentation.  I asked her to think about what she felt was important to tell him then suggested pictures and bullet points to remind her what to say.  I said that he may have questions to ask her during and after the talk, so she should be sure she had covered as much as she could initially, but I did say I would give her key words to remind her of the information if he asked her something she couldn’t answer.

She created 4 slides and searched for relevant pictures and remembered information from the previous 2 tasks.  When Daddy got back from work she asked him to sit down and started to talk about:

• what space weather is.
• how it affects those on earth and on the ISS.
• what protection is available.
• how we can predict it.
• what sunspots are.

Dad asked her a few questions which she was able to answer without my help. 🙂

She did really well.

Mission 2 Part 3 Complete

Elsa’s work has been uploaded and she has been awarded with her badge.

 

Remember a week or so ago I mentioned we had registered for the Unlimited Space Agency challenge?  Well it’s now started and each Monday, Elsa will be set a mission and this continues until Tim Peake’s rocket launches to the International Space Station (ISS) in December.

Each mission is split into 3 sections (Maths, English and Science).

Firstly, for Mission 1, we watched the intro video by Jon.

 

English

Research and explain various information about the ISS and Tim Peake.

Elsa decided she wanted to do poster for both of these elements as she finds it easier to collate information that way.

International Space Station

For the ISS, she decided to write her information on pictures of planets which I thought was inspired so we found a lovely set to print out.

We looked at a video showing you around the ISS, which was fascinating, although Elsa was quite shocked at the toilet and where that goes once it gets full. 🙂

We looked up various information including:

• who is there at the moment,
• what they have to do while they are there,
• we also looked at how fast they travel, and
• where they are right now (which when we checked they were flying over New Zealand)

We found out that, at present, there are 6 people aboard, 2 of whom are staying up there for 1 year as an experiment to see how the body reacts to being there twice as long as usual.

We also found out that the ISS has had a crew constantly aboard since the 2nd November 2000 (so 15 years last week).

Tim Peake

This year is an exciting one for Great Britain as it is the first time a British astronaut will have gone to the ISS.  Therefore, finding information out about him was very interesting (I’m jealous as he’s achieved so much in his life already and he’s younger than me 😉 )

  

 

Mission 1 Part 1 Complete

Science

For this mission we used ideas from Natural Born Homeschooler‘s space unit which I had previously downloaded and Homeschool Share‘s Planets and Stars, Sun and Moon units.

Where is the ISS and Earth in our solar system?  Research the different planets including size, what it is made of and distance from the sun. 

Firstly, we discussed the different planets, their sizes, what they were made of, how they got their names etc. and then Elsa completed some worksheets we found from 3 Dinosaurs (in PDF 1, although I have used a lot of sheets from the other PDFs  for Anna, to include her in this space challenge).  She also filled in mini books on their distance from the sun and whether or not they are solid or gas.

 

We also learned that the planets have very different temperatures, from being far too hot to being extremely cold.

We then made a Heliocentric model of the solar system.

   

Elsa also created each planet out of air drying clay and put them in the order they are from the sun.

Mission 1 Part 2 Complete

Maths

How far away from the Earth is the ISS?  How long it will take to get there?  How long it takes to orbit the Earth?  How many sunsets will be seen in days, weeks and months?

After looking up the information on the internet, we had to work out the answers to some questions.  Elsa couldn’t do these mentally yet, however, knew how to work them out so wrote how to do them in the workings part of the sheet I’d prepared.  She then used a calculator to get the answers.

During our research of the planets we found out how to work out how much you would weigh if you were to stand on each planet.  I asked Elsa if she knew how to do this using a calculator, she said she could.  So I left her to it. 🙂

The results were she is over 2 1/2 x heavier on Jupiter than on earth and under 1/2 as heavy on Mercury.  This resulted in a conversation about gravity. 🙂

Mission 1 Part 3 Complete

Elsa’s work has been uploaded and she has been awarded with her badge.

 

Did you know that Great Britain have their first astronaut flying to the International Space Station this December?  No? Well until recently I didn’t either.

Tim Peake is the lucky man who will be living and working there for 6 months.

The Unlimited Space Agency are running a series of space missions for children aged 7 – 11 which is perfect for Elsa as she wanted to learn about space as one of her topics. It is aimed at schools, however HE children are able to do it too, (Hooray), so we have registered her to the Astro Science Challenge where hopefully she will learn about space, space travel and the ISS among other things.

It starts on the 2nd of November so I’ll post about it again after Mission 1….

Counting down…….5……..4…….3……2……1………BLASTOFF.