Astronaut Training

A couple of weekends ago M and I spent almost the entire weekend in astronaut training. Well, he spent it in training. I was just helping him.

But before that happened, we went to a friend's birthday. Actually, the birthday was at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham. It's an awesome place with a rocket outside and a bunch of cool exhibits inside and on the museum's grounds. And yes, kids can touch and play with pretty much anything there.

So on that particular trip M spent quite a lot of time outside, primarily at the water feature. He said it was a space station's chocolate making factory. Making space chocolates... Hmm, as long as he's got his priorities straight.

Inside the museum M spent most of the time at the astronaut's exhibit looking at the videos of lunar landings and monkeys getting trained up for space flights. He also spent quite some time at this contraption kinda like the one they have at some malls. We launched a few coins down it and M concluded that it was a black hole (I couldn't agree more).

Finally, he spent the remaining hour or so in the space capsule, counting down and launching it (his countdown goes like this: "One-two-three-one-blast off!".

So the following weekend we had an astronaut training camp. Since M already knows so much about solar system, it was a bit of a challenge to come up with the age-appropriate learning tasks. And then I realized that even though we had a total of 4 solar systems around the house, we didn't have a single comet!

That became our first training task - to learn about comets and make one. Here it is, complete with a tissue-paper tail and a cotton-ball coma.

We then experimented with gravity, practiced putting the space suit on, discussed which foods cannot be eaten on the space station, ran around a little obstacle course, and went to the planetarium. By the way, M wore his full astronaut costume - space suit, glothes, helmet, etc - into the planetarium to the great pleasure of 100 or so people that happened to also attend the "Earth, Moon and Sun" show there that morning.

Further training was delayed due to inclement weather - snow! It was awesome, falling in huge heavy clumps that quickly covered the garden, the car, the driveway. M was so excited! You can see that he didn't even want to take time to change from his astronaut suit, but instead put a shark hat and a jacket on.

But then the novelty wore off and it started getting really cold outside. So we went inside and made a huge space mural of Astronaut M Exploring Lunar Surface. Then, while M acted out space shuttle's landing on the Moon and launch of Hubble, I asked him all sorts of questions for his letter to NASA (because you know, now that he is ready, it's up to them to decide what mission he'll fly and when).

Plus M wrote his own letter to NASA just to be on the safe side. Afterwards he put some more star and planet stickers on his space ship (he says they show all the places the space ship's been to) and the day was over. Now we're waiting for NASA to write back to us.

Rockets, Luna 3 and the Gas Giant Jupiter

Yep, we're still in the space age here at home. M still dons his astronaut suit almost every day and calls himself "космонавт Марк" or "ashtronaut Mark" (depending on who he's talking to). He takes his new mission very seriously too!

Just this past Monday he wanted to play with a slightly older boy. So I told him to first introduce himself and then invite the boy to play. So M immediately went over to the boy and said in his high-pitched voice: "Hi! I'm Mark. I'm ashtronaut." When the boy didn't respond, M explained himself further "One, two, three... Blast-off!" with an unmistakeable geasture of a rocket that's taking off.

Seriously though, not a day goes by without him requesting to make some new decorations for our Space Room (that's our family room and the adjacent hallway).

In addition to our pumpkin-box turned spaceship, two rockets from SparkCon festival (yes, they are still surviving) and a small, but ever-growing collection of space shuttles and plastic astronauts, we now have all of these:

Spaceships Taking Off from the Surface of Mars (you can see the big bright Sun and if you look very carefully right next to it there's Mercury). This particular art project, done about 3 weeks ago, used up a ton of glitter and left even more of it all over the family room.

"Luna 3" probe - my proudest creation! It looks just like the real thing (at least based on a picture in a sticker book). We used egg cartons, foil and some odds and ends.

Another large-size undertaking that we call "Earth-rise Seen from the Moon by the Apollo Crew" (you can see all the stickers of the Apollo modules, the astronaut, the lunar buggy and, of all things, a spiral galaxy). It actually looks good enough that for a while M pretended that it was an IMAX screen - he'd pull up a chair, sit down and "watch a movie".

Then we had a bit of a break and went to the Life and Science Museum in Durham. You know, the one with the drums. You know, the ones that M used to drum on for hours on end refusing to see or try anything else in the museum. You know, that's why we didn't renew our membership there last year (plus it's quite a drive from us).

Anyway, they have a life size model of an Apollo module, space costumes, a walk-in Apollo control module and some space-themed hands-on displays. Oh, and a big rocket right in front of the museum! Sure, this time around M spent most of the time inside the Apollo capsule pretending to count-down to blast-off.

Back home we also made this little display that we decided to call "Moon in the Sky" (yeah, not very original, I know).

and the "Solar System" mobile (again, not very original, but that's what this mobile is all about).

and also this "Space Shuttle Taking Off from the Launch Pad" picture (ok, so I did draw all the elements, but M helped me glue them on and he was responsible for the fire and clouds of smoke from the engines).
Then also there are these two original paintings. One is called "Canstellation of Stars with Glitter" and the other one - "Spiral Galaxies in Space". Guess which one is which.

Oh, I just realized that I still haven't taken pictures of our pumpkin-box spaceship and three other solar systems that decorate the family room. Hmm, well, to be continued...