Air and Space Museum Field Trip

A few weeks ago, we visited Washington, D.C. for Lego Man's birthday. Almost every year for his birthday, we head to some museum in Washington D.C.  We have been to the natural History Museum, the American Histroy Mueseum, the Udvar-Hazy Museum in Dulles, and the D.C. Zoo. Obviously, we have visited a few a couple of times. It's sort of a tradition now. It started when he was two. He asked Daddy to go see the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum. Gotta love a kids who LOVES visiting museums!

So this year, he chose the Air and Space Museum downtown. We have already visited the Udvar Hazy Museum in Dulles a few times already, so he was interested in seeing how this one compared.
We hit a little bit of traffic on the way in but overall it was rather easy. It's nice when you live a few hours away. You can live out in the sticks but can head into town and see the "fine culture" when you want.

We saw the beginning development of aircrafts, the early pioneers.

The Wright Brothers

Their first flight

We saw Amelia Earhart's plane.

A storybook that Amelia Earhart helped create. She didn't think there were enough books about planes for children.

It was very cute!

We saw planes from World War 1 and World War 2.

We saw some of the first space crafts and saw how space technology has come a long way.

I still don't think I would like to head into space. The spacecrafts just look like tin cans to me.

They had a wonderful hands on exhibit from NASA for kids(and adults) called Moving Beyond Earth. The kids had fun trying out the exhibits. They even got an opportunity to try their hand as a mission control flight director. Mom did too...sadly my mission ended rather too quickly. I didn't lose any astronauts though.

They had a wonderful exhibit called Explore the Universe. It was great! They talked about all the great scientists that the kids will be learning about later this year.....Galileo, Copernicus,and Kepler.

The museum is two floors and filled with all types of planes, space crafts, and hands on exhibits. It is a great place for kids to learn about planes, history, and space. We were there for 5 hours and still didn't see it all!

If you don't live close by, they do have some online exhibits that you can check out on their website.

You can head on over to see for yourself.

Till next time

~Monique