NASA’s newest robotic planetary rover blasted off in November on its mission to Mars. Scientists and engineers on Earth will control the rover’s Martian movements remotely, "driving" it  from 345 million (345,000,000) miles away. In the Howtosmile.org Out of Sight activity, learners can try their hand at driving remote-controlled toy vehicles in a “blind” test, from a location where they cannot see the vehicle or the course it’s following.

Kyle Hunter is a wizard at turning everyday items into afterschool hands-on science. As an educator at the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, his “Closet of Awesomeness” (the afterschool supply cabinet) has a special stock of recyclables he brings from home, plus a seemingly bottomless supply of “magic wands”—also known as popsicle sticks.

Holidays are a sensory experience full of special smells, tastes, sights and sounds. Why not start a new holiday tradition exploring the science of the senses! Howtosmile.org has hundreds of activities about the senses. Many can be done with foods and simple materials already on hand, for free or very low cost, and with mixed age groups, from family holiday gatherings to multi-grade winter camps.

Smell is one of our strongest senses, and affects how holiday and all foods taste to us. In The Nose Knows, a blindfold test lets learners experience the difference between how something tastes when they can smell it, and when they can’t. Not only foods add to the aromas of the season, when scented candles, potpourri and perfumes fill the air. Let learners get creative in Make Your Own Perfume to discover how scents combine, by using spices, flavorings, flowers and more to concoct their own signature scent.

With greeting cards in plentiful supply this month, learners of all ages can craft great mini-boxes for gifts, decorations, or just fun with a little math thrown in! In the Greeting Card Boxes activity, learners gain hands-on understanding of area and volume while creating their own paper works of art.

December is a big month for counting down—how many shopping days until a favorite holiday…how many school days until winter vacation…how many seconds until people start yelling “HAPPY NEW YEAR!”

Young learners can practice counting down all kinds of things with SMILE’s Countdown: Counting with a Calendar activity. Created by TERC, this activity encourages learners to express the amount of time they’re counting down in varied and combined units including months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds.

High school videographers are invited to submit a 2-minute video for the "Living On the Ocean Planet" High School Video Contest.

The theme of the contest is "A Sea of Change: Development and Evolution." The contest theme includes not only biological evolution, but human adaptations to a changing ocean. Deadline for submission is January 20, 2012.

The contest is sponsored by the National Ocean Sciences Bowl, National Marine Educators Association, and Ocean Today Kiosk.

For more information go to http://www.nosb.org/competitions-2/nosb-video-contest/.

From the songs of humpback whales in the open sea, to the rhythm of waves against the shore, the ocean is full of music. Now, an award-winning music CD—created by musicians, scientists and educators—is inspiring and teaching kids about the science of the ocean.

Only One Ocean, with 14 rockin’, fact-filled songs, is a first-of-its-kind ocean literacy project, written and recorded by the popular Banana Slug String Band (seen here crossing "Crabby Road"). The entire CD was supported and reviewed for content by scientists and educators from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Marine Educators Association (NMEA), Centers for Ocean Sciences Excellence (COSEE), and Marine Activities, Resources and Education (MARE) program at UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science.

Texas may not be polar bear country, but that doesn’t stop kids from flocking to the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History—in their pajamas—for polar science fun. On Saturday mornings and pre-holiday dates this December, children and families at the museum’s popular Polar Pajama Parties can get their hands on hot cups of cocoa and cool (even freezing) polar-themed science activities, before going to see “The Polar Express: The IMAX Experience” in the museum’s Omni Theater.

"Chocolate is a perfect food, as wholesome as it is delicious, a beneficent restorer of exhausted power..."—Baron Justus von Liebig, 19^th-century chemist who helped establish the field of organic chemistry

Want to get learners thinking about chocolate beyond their trick or treat bags? Chicago’s Field Museum uses the power of chocolate to tempt learners into discovering the science of cacao, from tree seeds to taste buds and beyond.

Free downloads of the new howtosmile.org mobile app for iPhone and iPod touch made the perfect giveaway at this year’s Association of Science-Technology Centers annual conference in Baltimore. The free mobile app’s debut marked a year since the howtosmile.org collection—now up to nearly 2,400 STEM activities—officially launched at the 2010 ASTC conference. Carla Thacker (in photo) from the Museum of Science and Industry Chicago was the first ASTC 2011 attendee to download the mobile app.