Space Night

Thursday was Space Night for the second graders at Andrew's school.  You'll remember I had worked on a couple of projects in preparation for this big event.  The night started off around 5:30 with a pizza dinner.  Then, so the kids wouldn't get caught in that post-dinner slump, the teachers had them line dance.  Seriously.  These 7/8 year olds were hokie-pokeying and macarena-ing and electric slide-ing for about 45 minutes!  Andrew, who is not much of a public dancer, was not thrilled about this turn of events.  "Mom, this has nothing to do with Space!"  he complained.  "This is just like the Hoedown!"  Finally, the line dancing portion of the evening ended and the actual space night events began.  Apparently the teacher's plan worked because those kids were WOUND UP. 

The kids were broken up into two groups.  Group One would go make rockets while Group Two rotated through to four space related stations.  Group Two was further broken up into smaller groups so that each station would only have about 3 kids at a time.  After all the kids in Group Two had visited each station, everyone would switch and Group One would tour the stations while Group Two made rockets.  Make sense?  Don't worry....basically all you need to know is that the kids were making rockets and visiting different space stations.  I was in charge of taking a small group of kids around to the stations.  My first group consisted of Andrew and a couple of other boys, and our first stop was the Moon Shoes.  (Remember how I made them during our black out last week?)  The kids bounced up and down the hall for about 15 minutes to get the feel of what it's like to walk around on the moon.  (I tried on these moon shoes while I was making them, and I highly doubt this is what moon walking feels like....but what do I know, right) 

After the moon shoes, I took my little group over to see this guy (I think he was some kid's dad) with a big telescope.  Originally we were supposed to be outside looking at the night sky through the telescope, but they should have known better than to hope for a clear night on Okinawa.  The guy should have also known better than let a bunch of second graders get that close to his fancy schmancy telescope.  As he was talking about mirrors and lenses, one of the kids kept sticking his head into the barrel of the telescope, and if that wasn't enough, he had his sticky, drippy juice bag dangerously close.  I thought Telescope Guy was going to explode if the had to tell the kid one more time to get that juice bag away from his very expensive telescope. 

The next station was a computer station where the facilitators (some middle schoolers) used a projector to shoot some images onto a screen and they asked the kids what they knew about it (as in, "Here's a picture of the sun....tell me what you know about the sun." )  To be honest, is wasn't all that exciting and held the second graders' attention for about 8 seconds.  The last (and best) station was a mini planetarium in the library.  I can't really even explain this....basically we sat in a large dome-like thing held up by a big fan (like what they use for those bounce houses.)  Inside it was a machine with a computer and the teacher would click some things on the computer and a space-related image (like the moon or stars) would be projected onto the ceiling of the dome.  The image would also move or rotate so it felt like you were looking up into the night sky.  The only bad thing about the planetarium is that after a while of looking up at those moving objects I got a little queasy, but that could have also been because the kid next to me took off his shoes and his feet stunk.  After the we went through all the stations,  I dropped the kids off in the rocket-making classroom, where they turned a water bottle into a rocket that they would launch the next afternoon.

(Quick observation about space night....as much as I complain about my kids being a little, um....rambunctious....it takes being around other people's children to realize I don't have it so bad.  Enough said.) 

The space activities didn't end with space night.  The next day the kids had the opportunity to test-fly their rockets.  I'm using the word "rocket" loosely here.  Basically it was a large water bottle decorated with construction paper and cardboard wings (made to look like a rocket.)   The water bottled is filled with water and placed on top of a rocket launcher.  Someone's dad then uses an air pump to pump air into the bottle rocket, and after a very exciting countdown the Rocket-Maker pulls a cord and the rocket flies way high in the air.  Really, really high.   I know I'm not explaining it very well, and maybe some of my physics/engineering type readers can further elaborate on how this whole thing works (you know who you are!) 

Here are a couple of videos of the whole operation.  The first one is the rocket launch preparation, and the second is the actual launch. 

All in all, space night (and day) were quite a success. I think the kids did learn a lot about space.  These teachers have made the kids really excited about learning, and it makes us more comfortable with our decision to send them back to school. 

The rest of the week was rather uneventful.  The older kids had standardized testing in their classes.  One child was rather annoyed with the testing process (because it's just "so boring") while the other child was a stress-case the entire week.  You can guess which is which.   I'm glad this is only a once-a-year event. 

Nothing much on the horizon for this coming week.  Today is St. Patrick's Day over here and there's a parade nearby that we're thinking of attending (mainly because I'm curious about the kind of St. Patrick's Day parade the Okinawans can put on.  They don't really seem like a St. Patrick's Day kind of crowd.)  Whatever happens, I'll be sure to let you know how it goes.  Happy St. Patrick's Day!