Space is Cold & Edible!

How often do you use space, ice and food in a sentence? Hopefully more often than not after Tuesday's NASA inspired workshop. Shelley Quezada, a Simmons Library School Professor & MBLC's Consultant for Library Services to the Underserved offered a WONDERFUL workshop FULL of web resources that you can use, promote and borrow in support of your program. Explore! To the Moon and Beyond is one of many NASA inspired shelf-ready programs that educators and parents can use. Whether you are in the classroom or in the library this program features the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter(LRO) & Lunar Crater Observation & Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) missions. LRO/LCROSS what? Yeah, I know. It's a mouth full but if I could explain it in a nutshell--an unmanned spacecraft that will orbit the moon for a year to collect data primarily of the moon and of the sun's radiation for future space flight and scientific research. NASA with the help of teachers and NASA scientists has created very informal and traditionally low-cost projects that you can recreate at your library. While Shelley was kind enough to provide information on different books, links and exercises, we also took the time out to try out another shelf-ready program for kids aged 8 and up. Explore! Ice Worlds! a ready made program that can be found on The Lunar & Planetary Institute's (LPI) website provides a hands-on-lesson that will forever be ingrained into the left (& right) brained emerging scientist. See below the results of an All About Ice experiment that reiterates the freezing temperature of ice. It's amazing what a little ice, salt, sugar, milk and vanilla extract will do in a ziploc bag.



And once again, we ask that you do try this Ice Cream in a Ziploc Bag activity at your library.