Mars Rover Activity

1 stopwatch
8 rocks (or other objects about the size of a fist)
2 pair of glvoes
2 skateboards
2 blindfolds (spray painted cheap goggles work well)
2 school daypacks

In the space exploration race, both Americans and Russians have landed on Mars at the same time. Now, the race is on to be the first to bring back proof of life to Earth.

The surface of Mars is too hot during the day and too cold at night, so you must explore on a specially designed Mars Rover with insulated wheels. Your special gloves protect your hands. To protect your eyes from the intense sunlight, protective goggles are required and your team monitoring you safely from your spaceship will direct you.

You have a small oxygen tank containing only 4 minutes of air and you must return before your opponent with more artifacts than they retrieve.


Rules:

• Mark a start line and distribute 8 artifacts across the exploration area.
• Your "Rover" is a skateboard.
• Each explorer lies on a rover, puts on gloves and protective goggles.
• Each explorer is given a pack in which to carry up to 8 Mars artifacts.
• On "Go", each explorer heads out into the exploration area, searching for artifacts.
• All other scouts in the explorer's patrol stay behind the start line (in their spaceship) and yell out directions to the explorer.
• The first explorer back with 5 artifacts wins.
• The explorer back with the most artifacts before 4 minutes expires wins - if you only have two items and time is getting short, get back to the spaceship rather than run out of time.
• An explorer not back to the spaceship in 4 minutes loses.

Play this with one patrol against another. Run each patrol in two rounds, each time against a different patrol with different scouts as explorers.