Rocket man!

A family in our homeschool co-op is actively involved in a rocket club and on Friday they invited us all to come and put rockets together with them. Their friend had a surplus of rockets and was itching to get a group of kids together so he could lure them into the rocket club (I suppose). Whatever the case, I signed us up for three rockets. There were probably 20 or so kids there.

The rocket family (and their rocket-expert friend) talked about rockets briefly before helping everyone put their rockets together. I was surprised by Benjamin's knowledge about rockets. I did not know he knew the answers to all the questions he was answering about rockets...but apparently this was a good activity for him. 

I don't have pictures of him putting his rocket together because he was at the "advanced" table with the older kids in the homeschool group. I hung around with Zoë and Alexander, who needed a little more help putting together their rockets.

Here's Alexander with his finished product:

Zoë decorated hers to look like a Christmas tree. Benjamin left his plain white, but perhaps he'll decorate it before we launch it. 

The club had a launch today, but because of all the Christmas stuff we had going on we weren't able to make it. So we'll try joining them next month.

I was, perhaps, more excited to learn how excited Andrew was about this. He used to make and launch model rockets when he was younger and is kind of thrilled that Benjamin (and Alexander and Zoë) are also excited about them. So he's looking forward to the launch next month as well.

Model rockets are a little trickier out here because there simply aren't wide open spaces to be found (unlike in Utah where wide open spaces are rather easy to come by). This club has an agreement with a private school to use their field one Saturday a month, and another agreement with someone who has some cattle in some random urban-farm. So that's why they have scheduled launches (because you'll get in trouble for launching things in city parks here). Anyway, we're looking forward to the launch—it should be fun!