Science Fair and the College Park Aviation Museum

Last Saturday Sarah was in the Montgomery County Science Fair. She got to go to the county level since she had placed 2nd in her school for the 6th grade at the school's science fair a couple of months ago. (I still need to take a picture of her with her project and really big 2nd place ribbon.) Sarah loves science and was excited to get to participate at the county level. She and David worked on a project for over a month earlier in the year. They used freshwater plants in quart jars and slowly added different amounts of sea salt to the water of all but one of the plants. They then measured the plants and watched what happened to them over time. I'm not very scientifically minded, so it was nice for David and Sarah to work on this project together. It was also convenient that we had a lot of the supplies already because of our salt water fish tank. Anyway, last Saturday she got to take her project to the University of Maryland and put it on display with other middle schoolers from all over the county. No parents were allowed to enter and she had to stay by her project and answer questions from the roaming judges for 2 1/2 hours. I was so proud of her--something like that would totally freak me out--and she wasn't even nervous.

While she was at the science fair, the rest of us decided to go to the College Park Aviation Museum which was only a few blocks away. It is a fairly small musuem, and I had often wondered how they stay in business with the huge Air and Space Museum in DC that is so close (and free). But I was really impressed with the museum and we had a lot of fun, so I would definitely recommend it to anyone. It is quite different than the Air and Space Museum and has lots more hands-on activities, especially for younger children.

I learned a lot of history while I was there. It turns out the College Park Aviation Museum is located on the grounds of the world's oldest continuously operating airport in College Park, Maryland. The airport was founded in 1909 when Wilbur Wright came there to give flight instruction to the 1st military aviators. They had a big display about the Wright Brothers, which my kids enjoyed since we went to Kitty Hawk a couple of summers ago.

They had lots of other cool airplanes and we even got a lesson on the four forces of flight (something I think I missed out during my formal education). It was very interesting and we had a fun time.

The kids were cracking me up in all the flying gear!