Poco Mountain Girl

Last weekend we headed out to the Cool Science fair at the UC campus of Colorado Springs. The day was perfect, and Pike’s Peak towering above us added – just a little – to the beauty.

First of all, we got some giant bubbles going to set the mood for the day.

Caleb and Zia set off some alka-seltzer rockets

and (under supervision of the Air Force) made air-powered rockets out of construction paper.

They set them off with these contraptions

and then ran out to retrieve them. The farthest rocket made it to the end of the field.

Mathtastic is a dance team that works mathematical concepts into their moves.

Zia raced to help when they asked for volunteers. That girl has way more guts than I ever will!

Here’s the craft table…where Zia and I felt right at home.

She’s her Mamma’s girl through and through.

It’s truly scientific how the watercolor runs off the oil pastel – and besides that it resembles an explosion, don’t you think?.

There was a collection of things from the sea, and a live hermit crab.

Caleb and Zia made balloons with hex nuts and pennies inside. Caleb got a skewer through his balloon without popping it, with a little help from some baby oil.

We looked at some sunspots and saw Venus.

It was truly a cool science day. Caleb got to drive 2 large robots, which I completely missed while absorbed in the oil pastels.

Another highlight for us was the Stellar Portal. We went inside a fabric dome with a space-commander guy inside who gave a presentation of the stars, planets, and constellations. You can find the things he showed us (and lots of other cool stuff) at stellarium.org.

When we got home, we looked into the star-spangled sky above our house and saw the Milky Way stretched out over us. It was so incredibly beautiful – I don’t think I’ve ever lived in another place with such an amazing view of the heavens.

With all that we saw at the fair, science really is amazing. But with one glance at the sky, creation is unfathomable.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 18th, 2011 at 10:31 am and is filed under Caleb, Colorado, Little Redhead Girl, Making Stuff, Nature, Travels, unschool. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.