My goal is to make interactive science notebooks engaging for 5th grade and middle school science students while improving science test scores. NGSS expert, teacher, tpt author, mom, & widow

Follow Your Dreams- Taking a trip to Cal Tech & NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab


One of my favorite things about being a parent is encouraging my children to pursue their interests and supporting them. One of the reasons I have chosen to send my kids to school and not home school is so I can spend the time and energy in helping them pursue out of the box interests. School covers the basics and I get to take learning to a whole new level!

Our 14 year old loved learning about astronomy in his science class this last year. He had a wonderful teacher, Miss M. (my teaching partner.) To take the learning to the next level, I signed up for a public tour of the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. Click here to learn about tours and sign up.

When I signed up, our tour was two months away. The Jet Propulsion Lab is run by Cal Tech and funded by NASA. In addition to taking two of my own kiddos, I brought two of my awesome Maker Studio students who are heading off to high school. It was a two and a half hour drive to L.A. I was armed with snacks and drinks. I buffered our time because of traffic and stopping for lunch. Our tour was scheduled for 1 pm and we were up there at about 11:00 am. We went to Cal Tech first, ate lunch in the cafeteria, and got a booklet for a self-guided tour.

It gave me goose bumps to see the name of one of the main streets on campus at Cal Tech is the name of our tiny school, San Pasqual. It seemed we were meant to be there. I love the tiny and constant glimpses that you are on the right path. I felt this was one of them. Cal Tech is small but we only saw part of the campus. What we saw was beautiful. The kids loved the turtles in the pond.

We then headed to JPL which was less than 15 minutes away. It was a busy day and parking was tight. It was such a privilege to take these kids with unlimited potential and expose them to such a visionary organization. JPL was started when "rocket boys" at Cal Tech were experimenting with rocket fuel and had some mishaps. It was decided they should do their experiments a little further from the main campus. See Early History here. JPL is a place where what was impossible is possible now and solutions to seemingly insurmountable challenges are solved by brilliant minds.

We got to see the clean room where the back up heat shield for Curiousity is stored and crates of materials for the Mars 2020 rover are housed. We saw moon rocks, models of earlier Mars rovers, the control room, a model size of Curiousity, data streaming from probes, and a showing of "7 Minutes of Terror."

Clean Room- so bacteria isn't taken to space
Silver circle on R is the back of heat shield for Curiousity

I love the mission statement adopted by JPL: "Dare Mighty Things." I might put it up in my classroom. The full quote from Teddy Roosevelt is:

"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/theodorero103499.html

Mission Control at JPL