Game Descriptions and National Standards


NASA Kids' Club has educational games, engaging multimedia and visuals, and educational activities to cover K-4 students' developmental and learning abilities as addressed in national education standards in math, science and technology. The skills levels provide a natural progression through the site that allows users to find games that are best suited to their varying abilities. Developmentally appropriate content is based on national education standards and benchmarks per grade level. Content is written within the K-4 reading levels as determined by the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Score, a tool available in Microsoft Word.

Level One
Level Two
Level Three
Level Four
Level Five


Level One -- Grade K Standards/Skills

What Comes Next?

Students view a row of space-related objects and must choose the one that comes next in the sequence.

Standard: NCTM -- Recognize, describe and extend patterns, such as sequences of sounds and shapes or simple numeric patterns, and translate from one representation to another.

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Grab It

Students use the space shuttle's robotic arm to grab three items from a group of four that begin with the same sound as a given letter.

Standard: NCTE -- Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).

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It's Not the Same

Students compare two space-themed drawings and are challenged to find five things that are not the same.

Standard: NCTM -- Sort and classify objects according to their attributes and organize data about the objects.

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Level Two -- Grade 1 Standards/Skills

Rocket Builder

Students are provided with a variety of shapes that they use to build a rocket.

Standard: NCTM -- Recognize, name, build, draw, compare, and sort two- and three-dimensional shapes. ITEA -- Students will develop an understanding of engineering design.

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Airplane High Low

Students use clues provided by a cartoon airplane character to find a secret number.

Standard: NCTM -- Develop an understanding of the relative position and magnitude of whole numbers and of ordinal and cardinal numbers and their connections.

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Level Three -- Grade 2 Standards/Skills

Addition Blastoff

Students group numbers to answer addition problems, which result in the successful launch of a rocket.

Standard: NCTM -- Compute fluently and make reasonable estimates.
Develop and use strategies for whole-number computations, with a focus on addition and subtraction.
Develop fluency with basic number combinations for addition and subtraction.

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Star Fall
Students are challenged to capture groups of stars that are the same color. When captured, the stars disappear and points are accumulated.

Standard: AAAS -- More stars are in the sky than anyone can easily count, but they are not scattered evenly, and they are not all the same in brightness or color.
NSES -- Objects in the sky.
NCTM -- Understand patterns, relations and functions.

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Roving on Mars

Students use their fine motor skills and eye-hand coordination to navigate a rover through a maze on the surface of Mars.

Standard: ISTE -- Students are proficient in the use of technology. Use input devices (e.g., mouse, keyboard, remote control) and output devices (e.g., monitor, printer) to successfully operate computers, VCRs, audiotapes and other technologies.

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Level Four -- Grade 3 Standards/Skills

Flip Time

Students are challenged to match analog times to the corresponding readings on digital clocks.

Standard: NCTM -- Recognize the attributes of length, volume, weight, area and time.

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Search for Spinoffs

For more than 40 years, NASA has shared its technological discoveries with private industry, resulting in new products and services in medicine, transportation, public safety, computer technology and caring for Earth’s environment. In this game, students use clues to find hidden NASA spinoff items.

Standard: ITEA -- Students will develop an understanding of the relationships among technologies and the connections between technology and other fields of study.
NSES -- Abilities of technological design.

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Level Five -- Grade 4 Standards/Skills

Go to the Head of the Solar System

Students are challenged to answer questions about celestial objects as they travel through the solar system.

Standard: NSES -- Objects in the sky.
AAAS -- Earth is one of several planets that orbit the sun, and the moon orbits around Earth. Planets change their positions against the background of stars.

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Jumbled Jets

Students must use logic and reasoning skills to determine the correct arrangement of airplanes on a runway.

Standard: NCTM -- Understand patterns, relations and functions.
Develop and evaluate inferences and predictions that are based on data.
Problem-solving.
Reasoning.

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National Standards and Other Sources Used in Game Development

National education standards sources referenced:
> National Science Education Standards, or NSES  →
> American Association for the Advancement of Science's, or AAAS's, Science Netlinks  →
> International Technology Education Association, or ITEA  →
> International Society for Technology in Education, or ISTE  →
> National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, or NCTM  →
> National Council of Teachers of English, or NCTE  →

Various standards and benchmark sources:
Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning, McREL, Compendium Standards and Benchmarks  →.
Core Knowledge K-2  → and 3-5  →.