Family ASTRO is a program of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) and the W. M. Keck Observatory to help families enjoy astronomy and hands-on science together. The heart of the project is a series of astronomy kits designed to be both educational and fun for children ages 7 and up (and for adults who work and play with them.)

Family ASTRO is part of a larger program called Project ASTRO ™, that has, since 1993, linked over a thousand of volunteer amateur and professional astronomers with 4th through 9th grade teachers in their communities. In 2000 ASP received pilot funding from the Informal Science Education Division of the National Science Foundation to develop a strategy and materials to bring astronomy in a more systematic way to families in the same communities where Project ASTRO operates. We hope to get families away from watching Hollywood stars and outside to follow the real stars.

Our way of involving families is to invite them to evening or weekend family events, where they will have fun doing astronomy activities together. At the events, families get to try some activity stations as well as a number of facilitated activities, and then receive a kit to take home. Each event is led by one or more volunteer Event Leaders, such as education staff from a local museum, planetarium, or community group. All event leaders are trained in how to organize Family ASTRO programs and do astronomy activities at regional workshops organized by the Project ASTRO sites.

Throughout the process of development, ASP has paid careful attention to what families actually want and like, instead of pretending to know what is best for them. With the help of the Institute for Learning Innovation, they conduct focus groups and trial family events with a wide range of families all over the United States.

An important goal of the project is to help parents (and other caregivers) to get more involved in their children's science education, and to spend more time together in active experiments, observations, and discussion. Families are strongly encouraged to come to more than one event, and to continue their exploration of the event topic at home.

There are three Family ASTRO kits now offered in Hawaii County:

MOON MISSION explores our closest neighbor, the Moon, the only celestial body humans have actually set foot on. Families play a collaborative game where they work and plan together to bring a number of damaged instruments back to their Moon Base; they have only two weeks (one day on the Moon) to do this. Families also learn about stories of the moon in different cultures, explore why the moon has phases, build play-doh models and conduct experiments about the moon's size and distance from earth, and find out how high they can jump on the Moon.

COSMIC DECODER helps families learn how to sort beautiful pictures of various kinds of cosmic objects. They construct "Cosmic Visors" to compare what their world and the universe look like in different colors, and create and display "secret messages" using a color code. Families also learn about messages scientists are sending to possible civilizations among the stars. They work together to decode a cosmic message and then have fun constructing their own family message using a kind of picture code. Every family gets to take home a "Cosmic Decoder" card set. The set of 72 beautiful color cards lets families play four different games that teach astronomy and encourage both competitive and cooperative play.

RACE TO THE PLANETS encourages the exploration of many intriguing worlds in our solar system. Families get to play a planet game (with a secret decoder), build their own planetary flags, and figure what they would weigh on Jupiter or Pluto.