Factory Earth
Board Game
ABOUT
Age Level: 10+
Setting: Small group (2-4 players)
Type: Board game
Topics: Land cover, natural resources
Estimated Time: 30 minutes
Travel to different Landsat scenes and collect Earth resources then go to a factory to manufacture various products such as pencils, baseballs, and fish sticks.
The back of the 2020 Earth Science Week poster.
Allison Nussbaum and Ginger Butcher
Materials & Setup
- Collect Materials: One playing piece (a small unique object) for each player, a paperclip, paper tack or pencil, and one six-sided die
- Setup: Download and print game board. Download and print instructions file then cut out Raw Material tokens, Product cards, and the Disaster Spinner. Assemble spinner using the paper clip and paper tack.
Game Play
- Each turn, a player rolls the die, moves that number of hexes, and collects ONE raw material token from the hex landed on.
- To earn product cards, players must land on a factory hex and trade in the raw materials required for that product.
- If a player rolls a 6, a disaster occurs. The player does NOT move their piece, but instead spins the Disaster Spinner to see what raw material is impacted.
- Play continues until a player manufactures 12 points worth of products.
Landsat: Earth Resources Seen from Space
The 2020 Earth Science Week poster was created as a joint effort between NASA, AmericaView, and USGS and incorporates Landsat imagery to highlight the theme “Earth Materials in Our Lives”. The Earth Resources from Space poster displays stunning Landsat imagery for six different sources of Earth materials: evaporation ponds, mines and quarries, water, rangelands, croplands, and forests.
The front of the 2020 Earth Science Week poster.
Allison Nussbaum and Ginger Butcher
