Monday, July 20, 2009

Explorations

Today is the 40th anniversary of humanity's first steps on the moon. Exciting stuff. What vast distances will our little ones cross in the service of humanity and for the greater glory of God? Who can know?

Our explorations last week started with the beach day on Tuesday and ended with space on Saturday. We also did some exploring at the library on Friday when the Lone Star Baby played the annual Library Game, a scavenger hunt through the library of sorts, to celebrate the end of the Summer Reading Club.

On Saturday, the Voyage exhibit opened in our sparkling city, in honor of the moonwalk anniversary. Permanent (lovely) stanchions were erected along the seawall proportionately representing the solar system in size and distance. There were stanchions for the sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, the asteroid belt (including Ceres), Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Each stanchion has a representation of its celestial body in proportion to the sun's representation and each stanchion includes a display with information about that part of the solar system. It's really cool. We went to the ribbon cutting and the first walking tour, led by an astrophysicist named "Dr. Jeff" from the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education. He was quite fascinating and it was a great tour, but it was also really hot to be walking that far - we will have to go back in the evenings when it is cool. The sea wall is a very scenic vista for the exhibit, as well as long enough - it's rather perfect. There are soon going to be brochures available with challenges and activities that you can use the information on the stanchions to accomplish - it sounds wonderful! We are the fourth city to get this installation and I think ours is the prettiest.

After the tour, there were space activities at the Museum of Science and History and we explored the museum during its Saturday scavenger hunt. At night, there was another space lecture by Dr. Jeff at Flour Buff High School followed by telescope viewing in the parking lot. A very cool space day!




3 comments:

Andrea said...

The exhibit sounds amazing...and it looks like you're having a fun/busy summer.

Saints and Spinners said...

Yay! Now let's get to Mars, and just for kicks, let's send both women and men there.

Lone Star Ma said...

We recently read a cute picture book called Mars Needs Moms by the Far Side guy.