theme week cheat sheet: flight week
books
Flying books we actually read:
(Should I just say book? There was only one.)
Pros:
- About an awesome female pioneer.
- Fun illustrations.
- I love that this book depicts Amelia Earhart as a child throughout. She never really grows up in the illustrations, so the kids can visually identify with her accomplishments. It's not like, oh she's a kid doing stupid shit, and then she's a grown up doing awesome shit. Sometimes kids can do awesome shit too.
Cons:
- I can't be the only person on earth who hates speech bubbles in their kids' books, right? It's like, when do I say this? Now I have to come up with like a voice for Amelia Earhart's flying teacher? SIIIIIGH.
Books we read this week that featured birds but were mostly about things other than flying:
Flying books I heard were really good and put on hold at the library but (full disclosure) never actually picked up because sometimes taking 2 toddlers to the library sounds like just the wrong side of the River Styx:
outings
Museum of Flight
Pros:
- Really cool airplanes, including Nixon's Air Force One, a Concord, and a B-11 bomber. You can go inside some of the planes, and there are a couple of fighter jets inside the museum where your kids can climb in the cockpit.
- Usually there is a kid's play area with fun planes and games.
- Membership is actually pretty reasonable, and you get a bunch of free guest passes.
- They have short 20-minute movies about space flight and whatnot.
- You're right next to a real-life runway, so you can watch small planes taking off and landing.
Cons:
- Not that much to interact with for kids who really need hands-on stimulation. There will be many, many, many versions of the "you can't touch that but you can touch your nose" conversation.
- The barricades to the planes on display are not that impressive, actually... they are low walls, which make them psychological barriers rather than physical ones. It can be wildly frustrating for children like Buster and Chicken.
Woodland Park Zoo
Willawong Station Bird Feeding
For $1 you get a popsicle stick with birdseed glued on one end, and you can feed budgies and cockatiels to your heart's content.
Pros:
- so fucking hands-on I can barely stand it
- The face Chicken made when a bird landed on his popsicle stick... it was more than terrorjoy. It was ecstatopanic.
- We ate a picnic lunch in a big field and then pretended to be birds in a nest. I was the Mommy bird who ran out to get food for the baby bird. Chicken would hop out and run around and then say "I'm hungry, Mommy, bring me some pizza and worms!" Buster... well... he was just psyched to be there. Kid's 1.
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| my birdies in the nest |
Cons:
- THE BIRDS ARE COMING FOR US THEIR EYES ARE SO EMPTY
Golden Gardens Beach Park
Flying kites
Pros:
- You're at the motherfucking beach.
- It's almost always windy enough to get a kite up at the beach.
Cons:
- You have to both pack and clean up after a trip to the motherfucking beach.
- If it's a busy day at the beach you will scream JESUS GOD RUN I CAN'T CONTROL IT when the kite goes plummeting pointy-end-first toward a mother breastfeeding her newborn babe in a lounge chair.
- Much like spotting rainbows at the spray park, once you get to the beach, the kite becomes kind of a formality.
Yeah, yeah, hold onto yer shorts Mom.
We'll fly the kite, but first I need to crust up my shit
eat this charcoal
and throw some rocks at strangers
having a grown-up picnic
with chablis
and cloth-wrapped cheeses.
food
Astronaut Ice Cream
Conveniently for sale in the Museum of Flight gift shoppe after Eleanor royally fucked us. Whatever, so worth $3.
arts, crafts, activities
Blue sky collage of things that fly
1. Paint a lot of blue on a big piece of paper.
2. As you explore things that fly throughout the week, cut out a silhouette and let your kid paint that silhouette.
3. Once it's dry, glue the painted silhouette on the blue sky.
4. Add stickers at your discretion. Remember, more is more.
If I had to do it again...
Absolutely! No regrets here. It was easy, laid-back, took 5-10 minutes a day. I just left the blue sky paper taped to my kitchen table between painting sessions, but then we have already established that my family cares more about crafts than a civilized dinner.
flight week recap
Highlight of Flight Week was definitely the bird feeding at the Woodland Park Zoo.
Low point? Other than Eleanor the well-meaning docent, we really didn't have one. It was a fun week.