We have been having a lot of fun with a variety of apps I have found about space. This one has become a favourite! It is another Augmented Reality app called Spacecraft 3D. This is an app from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology.
You download a marker and then place the iPad over the marker and this lovely 3D image appears. The best part is that you can take your picture with it! There are 13 different spacecraft that you can view including the Curiosity and Hubble telescope!
There are animations and information about each of the spacecraft!
We had fun looking at the spacecraft and choosing which one we wanted to have a picture with. The children then posed with the image and these are some of the cool results.
We also watched this video about the Curiosity landing on Mars! The graphics are amazing and the children were completely captivated. There were some great explanations of how everything was created just for this spacecraft!
While we were learning about the Curiosity spacecraft I found a cool NASA website that focused on the Mars expeditions. There are a lot of cool links on the site including one that lets you send a postcard to the Curiosity spacecraft on Mars! Too cool! Of course, we had to send a postcard!
If you would like to send your own postcard to Mars I have added a link for the postcard site on our class WIKI page in the Science section!
Another app we have had some fun with is called Space Journey. I love this app! It lets you choose a planet and then see it in relation to its place in the solar system!
You can pick from any of the planets in our solar system and then see it in space in relation to the other planets and the sun. Of course we had to try them all!
We got a little dizzy spinning around our solar system! You can move the planet around and see what it sees around it!
We are having too much fun with all the space apps! And there are many more!
Mrs. Anton's Class! 