On Friday Lexie's Montessori class went on a field trip to the Museum of Flight which is just south of Seattle about 45 minutes from here. There where 3 private buses (not big yellow school buses much to Lexie's disappointment) of kids from Lexie's pre-school kids up to elementary, thier teachers and parents for the trip. I was one of those parents - lucky me! No really!!
After their hour on the bus, the kids jumped off and attached this poor astronaut. Luckily he was made of stone or he would have been when they were done with him.
Here's most of the kids from Lexie's class that came. What a cute bunch of kids.
Once everyone had their hands stamped we headed inside for the little orientation from a volunteer. The senior citizen volunteer was very sweet but clearly wasn't paying attention to the age of his audience. After 15 minutes of him explaining the basics of how airplanes fly (and as he didn't mention Pixie Dust or Magic it went over all of these kids heads and most of the adults) he asked if anyone had any questions.
As you can see they had lost interest - ha! I was afraid Lexie was going to raise her hand and ask if she could have another hand stamp. But noone asked and they were all just happy to get up and explore.
Now this is a great museum with lots to see and discover but as with most 3 to 5 year olds (the age of Lexie's group) their attention span is about 2 minutes if they are just looking at something. Luckily we found the Flight Zone. An interactive area of the museum designed for kids.
Here's one of the wonderful murals painted on the entrance of the Flight Zone. This is where we spent almost all of our time. It was lots of fun for all the kids.
One of the cool displays was a hot air balloon which they got to "operate" by filling it up with hot air.
Here's my little Hot Air Balloon Princess (you knew she'd find a way to be a princess!)
One of our favorites was the hand gliding display. It was fun to watch her try to figure out how to make it land on the target - which she never did.
This was the screen she was looking at as she was "gliding." I wanted to try this one.
Then she was off to fly a helicopter,
then pilot a little sea plane, then she took control of the tower and
then she had to pilot one more small plane. She wanted Mommy to come for a ride but I told her no way - Mommy is the pilot in this family.The Zone was a really great adventure with all the hands on activities but I told her we needed to go see some other things - like outer space. So off we went.
Here's my little astronaut. Clearly she was too little for this but by now she wanted to "do" everything.
She loved this model of the space station and found it hard to walk on the glass floors.
And Lexie walking on the moon with the help of this robot was a hoot!
But my favorite moment of the day was seeing the 4-F Phantom - the jet my dad flew for the Air Force,
and getting a picture of Lexie standing next to a pilot dressed just like her Papa. Some of my favorite childhood memories where of dad coming home from work in his flight suit and us kids would zipped and unzipped all those pockets.
Here's a great shot of the tail of that bird. I sure miss you dad but I know you are flying high in one of these babies!
And here's my baby. Strapped in and ready for take off!!
