Posted by Laurie Sullivan at 4/25/2009 2:00:00 PM

Note- Scroll to the end of this blog entry to see more photos of the Kindergarten students. Kindergarten students learned about samples that have been brought back to Earth to understand more about the beginnings of our solar system. They learned about the Genesis mission to collect particles of solar wind. The samples from Genesis are the first extraterrestrial samples returned to Earth by NASA since the Apollo program, which ended in the early 1970s. To learn more about the Genesis mission, you can visit the following pages:

Genesis Mission Page http://genesismission.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html

http://www.space.com/news/genesis_archive_0409.html

Cleanroom Interactive Field Trip

Genesis Kids! Interactive Stickerbook

http://genesismission.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/index.html

The Kindergarteners also learned about the Stardust mission to collect samples from a comet! You can learn more about Stardust by going to:

http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/photo/top20.html

The students had the opportunity to experiment with a pretend sample from Mars…Space Sand! They compared and contrasted the space sand with regular sand. Their job as scientists was to discover how the sands are different and how they are the same. The sands were very different when they interacted with water.You can order your own space sand at:

http://www.dunecraft.com/products/spacesand.htm

Click here to view photos of all Kindergarten classes experimenting with space sand.