Classroom — Help Us Build Lesson Plans Every Teacher Can Use

The classroom guides are being updated, and lesson-plan submissions are paused. You can still explore the simulations and use the activities on their pages.

We create Earth and space science content. Teachers create the lessons. Our goal is making better education accessible to every teacher — free, no sign-up, nothing installed.

Have a lesson plan you're proud of?

We're looking for teachers to help create lesson plans. Bring us the one you already teach — in whatever state it's in — and we'll develop it with you: built on the simulators and live sky pages we already have, or on tools we build specifically for your lesson. Every plan is created for your topic and your grade band and shared that way, so as more teachers join in, this grows into a library a teacher can actually search. Then we'll publish yours, with your name on it, free for every teacher.

How the collaboration and the credit work, field by field, is written down at work with us. Nothing about a student is ever published.

Lesson plans we'd like to create — with you

We're starting from scratch on purpose: rather than fill this page with plans no teacher has taught, here is what we'd most like to build, and roughly what each would cover. Claim one — tell us your topic and grade band and we'll build it specifically for your class.

The seasonsThe "closer to the sun in summer" trap, broken by the class's own measurements — day length here vs. Sydney, on the same date.

Moon phasesA month of moonrise from the class's own town, why the phase is an angle, and why there isn't an eclipse every month.

Time zonesA political stripe on a rotating ball: why noon is a place, why China is one zone, and the seam where the date jumps.

TidesFor a coastal school: read this week's real NOAA chart, predict spring and neap from tonight's phase, then check.

Launch windowsHigh school: why a Mars rocket waits 26 months, derived from two orbital periods and checked against the real solved windows.

The leap yearThe stray quarter-day: count solstice to solstice, find the drift, and invent the fix Caesar's astronomers found.

Teach something these don't cover? Even better — send what you have.

Two examples of what we'd build together

Written by a non-teacher, and labelled that way on the page — they show the shape (timed steps, every step opening the exact live view, a teacher's key, a printable student sheet), and we think a real teacher's help would make them much better. That is the collaboration we're asking for.

Seasons · grades 7–8 The solar system · grades 3–4

Sixteen more drafts sit in an archive at their old addresses — unpolished on purpose, each one an invitation. If a link brought you to one, adopt it and we'll rebuild it with you.

What we bring to your lesson

Everything on this site is computed, never typed in — sunrise for your own town, tonight's moon, the planets where they actually are today — and it all runs full screen on a projector. Projector mode, in the menu on every page, raises the contrast for the back row.

Day & night map Sunrise & sunset for any town Moon phases & moonrise Earth’s orbit & the seasons The solar system, moving Launch windows to Mars NOAA tide charts Projector timer Stopwatch with laps

Start anywhere: Earth · Space · Time · the questions students actually ask.