Evening Professional Development: Mission Patches and Planning

Tuesday, June 26th, 2012
7:30pm - 9:30pm

Our evening professional development consisted of planning for the next day's activities.  We were visiting the space camp at Space Center Houston and doing an activity with the students there, and we had to make sure we were prepared.

We were split into two groups, and each group was going to do a different activity with the students.  The first group was going to do make Mission Patches with their kids, and the other group was going to do a lesson on Space Gloves.

Mission Patches:
Mission patches are actual patches that are designed by astronauts and graphic designers.  Astronauts receive these patches at the end of each mission.

Here are some examples:






To read more about mission patches, visit NASA's webpage.


For this activity, students are to make their own mission patches to signify themselves and a mission of their lives.  Here are some student examples shown:




To prepare, each PSTI partipant created their own Mission Patch to represent a long or short term goal that represents who we were.

For example, I created my Mission Patch with a puzzle piece to symbolize Autism Awareness, an apple to represent teaching, a sketch of me with children, and the words 'Educator' and Lifelong Learner' to represent my goals to be a great educator and successful in continuing my education.




Activity: Space Gloves Discovery

The other activity we planned for with our students was a discovery of Space gloves and using them in space.
The activities we planned included using garden gloves to zip and unzip, buckle, button, weave, play games (Perfection, Operation, Puzzles), and draw a picture. When the activity was over, we planned to give each camper a laminated 'Certification card' to congratulate them.

We only had half an hour with the campers so were limited on our activities, but we I was researching space places I found an awesome idea to teach about the layers of the space gloves by having students build their own gloves using household materials. Find that activity here.

One more thing I wanted to mention was the box we are using for activity. You can build your own glove box with a plastic tub, PVC pipe, and gloves. Find those instructions here.