🚀 🌕 HOMESCHOOL SCIENCE: Apollo 11 Moon Landing Resources

July 20th is the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, a momentous event in human history that every homeschooler should know about. Here’s a roundup of some great Apollo resources you can share this week with your students.

If you watch just one thing as a family event, I highly recommend the 2019 documentary called simply “Apollo 11” (trailer). It’s a full-length film that was produced almost entirely from rarely-seen footage kept by the National Archives in Washington:

NASA of course has a wide selection of Apollo Program materials available that are suitable for homeschool use (even a printable crossword puzzle):

• ➢ Apollo Program Resources (nasa.gov)

The website Space.com also has an excellent review of the whole series of Apollo missions with many video clips and links to additional information. It was prepared in 2019 for Apollo 11’s fiftieth anniversary:

• ➢ Apollo 11 at 50: A Guide to the Historic Moon Landing (space.com)

For little kids, here’s a wonderful five-minute animated version of the whole Apollo 11 mission, also prepared for the fiftieth anniversary and narrated by Apollo 11 astronaut Mike Collins himself:

And here’s an excellent 28-minute official Apollo 11 documentary from 1969:

• ➢ The Eagle Has Landed: The Flight of Apollo 11 (archives.gov)

Your students can also watch the complete 20-minute video of the descent sequence from lunar orbit to the moon’s surface. For anyone who is technically inclined, this footage is quite gripping. Many people don’t remember that the lander had only about 30 seconds of fuel left when it finally touched down because several last-minute course corrections had to be made. The video finishes with one of the most famous lines ever spoken: “Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

In 2019 the U.S. Postal Service issued some beautiful Apollo 11 anniversary stamps, but they unfortunately don’t seem to be available for general sale any more, although collector sites still carry them:

And I’d say your students should be able to recognize the source of the astronaut image on those stamps as part of their cultural, historical, and scientific education as well. It’s one of the most famous images in history: Neil Armstrong’s photograph of Buzz Aldrin standing on the lunar surface, taken this week in 1969 with one of the 70 mm Hasselblad cameras that were used on all the Apollo missions. (No digital photography back then, you know — the rolls of film had to come back to earth and get developed in a tank before anyone would know for sure how the pictures looked.)

How will you and your students be celebrating and studying this historic, scientific, and astronomic anniversary in your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ The Eagle has landed: If you turn to plate 123 in your recommended homeschool atlas (10th or 11th ed.) you’ll be able to locate the Sea of Tranquility where the Apollo 11 lander touched down for the first time. (Did you know your atlas has maps of the moon? It does and they’re beautiful!) 🌕

❡ Watchers of the skies: This is one of our regular Homeschool Astronomy posts. Subscribe to our free River Houses newsletter to get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🔭

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