Earlier this month, we decided to beat the heat and I heard there was a Space Fest happening at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. We went and had a blast (pun intended)! Ok ok... just fair warning, if there are any punny space jokes in this post, I'm apologizing now, I couldn't help myself.In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission and the moon landing, there were a bunch of talks on the subject, and we even met an astronaut, Daniel Burbank, who took the time to speak with kids interested in science, math and space. We also had the chance to see a real space suit up close. It was also neat that as we entered the museum they had taped footprints and the lunar module to scale so you could see how far everything was on the moon 50 years ago. The JFK Museum also offered a really neat Augmented Reality simulation on mobile devices through an app that you could use on your personal mobile device. I really enjoyed it.
We walked around and learned about all of the science and research that went into the Apollo 11 mission. There were some really fun activities for the kids, like building your own paper rocket and launching it using a compressed air pump (built and managed by students from MIT) to land on a planet (balloon) by popping it. Other activities included making your own space mission patch, space helmet and playing fun space jeopardy! We decided to play space jeopardy and even though our team didn't win, we got a chance to try some Astronaut Ice Cream - it was so cool (pun intended)! Just kidding, it was freeze dried. One thing I learned at an early age is to not eat that stuff too fast...We walked around some more and enjoyed real ice cream sundaes with fun space-themed toppings, like pop rocks and moon shaped candy! We made moon landing parachute, fabric moonscapes and even origami landing vehicles. It was a fun time for sure with lots of great activities to inspire the next generation.
