Wings Over the Rockies

Today I got to accompany Peter's class on a field trip to the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum. We arrived after a standard (noisy and bumpy) school bus ride, left our coats in a small room and then enjoyed a pizza lunch.

After lunch, we got to explore the museum, which is inside a giant hangar. I shepherded my four assigned boys around, first to look at the many airplanes, and play with a couple flight simulators, and then we got to explore the math midway exhibit, which had a lot of fun activities, that didn't really seem much like math to the kids. Eventually the teachers gathered us all together again to find our coats and load the buses for the return back to the school. It was a lot of fun!

Peter and the other kids had a chance to see how Orvil and Wilbur Wright's plane was steered, by leaning one way or the other and pulling up or pushing up on a bar. The progress of the plane was shown on a screen in front, and I observed one boy steer the plane directly into a tree and another boy flipped the plane over when he tried to land. I was glad it was only a simulation.

There were a lot of planes and jets, as well as exhibits showing flight suits and one diorama displaying a small plane that crashed on a mountain. The boys also got to see what the inside of a cockpit looks like, and even walk through a replica of a space shuttle.

There was a bomb hanging from the ceiling, almost directly over the space where my boys chose to eat their lunch. Luckily for us, it was securely attached, and didn't fall on us as we ate.

 The Math Midway exhibit was full of fun games and activities. The boys got to ride a square-wheeled bicycle around in a circle, build towers with giant building blocks (that looked like tetris pieces), design roller coasters, play with weights and a giant pirate ship themed scale, play with adjustable concave and convex mirrors, and lots more. I think the boys could have spent twice as long in that part of the exhibit and wouldn't have gotten bored because there were so many things they could try! There were activities with shapes and laser lights, stuffed dogs on leashes, a monkey on a tightrope, those wheely things that you can push around and they measure how many feet you've traveled. There was a "wheel of fortune" they could spin and predict what number it would stop on. There were tessellations, function machines, and more. It was really a lot of fun!

It was a lot of fun. Both John and Joshua were able to attend in past weeks, and I'm glad that they were able to have this experience. (And no, this wasn't intended as an advertisement, and no one is paying me to write this.)