This past weekend my daughter Alice and I went to the NYPOWER launch hosted by MARS and SRC in Geneseo, NY.
First of all, that's an amazing launch site and a nice group of people.
Second, just wanted to share a couple photos. In an effort to keep Alice---just short of 8 years old---engaged with rocketry, I planted the idea of hosting an activity table for kids. She immediately latched onto this and began making lists & plans of what we could do and what we'd need. In the end we brought some kits for kids to assemble, complementing the fly-it/take-it tent run by SRC, and a lot of stuff with which to decorate rockets: Stickers, markers, and lots of tapes---color masking tape, washi tape, and variously colored flagging tape for streamers. Also on hand were space and rocket themed coloring books, reading books, and a couple games.
There weren't that many kids around for the launch, and it can be hard to get little kids to socialize outside of well understood scenarios like playgrounds. But we had a lot of fun, built a handful of rockets, and decorated a bunch more with a small but steady succession of new friends. Notably, Alice enjoys being at launches, but she's usually pretty blasé about actually launching rockets herself. She likes running around outside, being goofy with the people we know, going on expeditions to recover wayward rockets, etc.. But here she was motivated and eager to launch a bunch, especially late one day as the pads emptied out to do a 3-way launch of her rockets... and then spend a long time walking patterns looking for the third one (somebody else eventually found it nestled in the grass right next to a mid power pad). It's been said on these forums often, but moral of the story is once again that the best way to engage kids is to engage multiple kids.
Although facilitating easy on-site construction has been a big focus of mine, increasingly I wouldn't worry about kids building their own rockets. I believe the Syracuse club also hold to that philosophy in their frequent kids events---they're quite specifically fly-it/take-its, not make-it/take-its. If the kids are into building that's great, but otherwise they'll come to it if you get them hooked. Put a rocket in their hands, let 'em fly it, and they'll adopt it and love it just as much as if they built it. Enable them to decorate it and they're making their own thing and being creative and you've got an easy stepping stone toward building. Again, not a new insight. Lots of clubs have "rocket buckets" and so on for kids, and the hobby thrives on devotees giving rockets to newcomers to go launch. But for me personally it's somewhat of a shift I'm making.
Lastly, get a cheap pair of walkie-talkies. Those are always fun no matter what, but also give cautious kids a way to wander a bit on their own without getting too nervous about being away from you.
In any event, this was a great weekend for us, and Alice has been talking about rockets unprompted all week since. Pretty good return for a small investment in a box of stickers, tape, and markers.
First of all, that's an amazing launch site and a nice group of people.
Second, just wanted to share a couple photos. In an effort to keep Alice---just short of 8 years old---engaged with rocketry, I planted the idea of hosting an activity table for kids. She immediately latched onto this and began making lists & plans of what we could do and what we'd need. In the end we brought some kits for kids to assemble, complementing the fly-it/take-it tent run by SRC, and a lot of stuff with which to decorate rockets: Stickers, markers, and lots of tapes---color masking tape, washi tape, and variously colored flagging tape for streamers. Also on hand were space and rocket themed coloring books, reading books, and a couple games.
There weren't that many kids around for the launch, and it can be hard to get little kids to socialize outside of well understood scenarios like playgrounds. But we had a lot of fun, built a handful of rockets, and decorated a bunch more with a small but steady succession of new friends. Notably, Alice enjoys being at launches, but she's usually pretty blasé about actually launching rockets herself. She likes running around outside, being goofy with the people we know, going on expeditions to recover wayward rockets, etc.. But here she was motivated and eager to launch a bunch, especially late one day as the pads emptied out to do a 3-way launch of her rockets... and then spend a long time walking patterns looking for the third one (somebody else eventually found it nestled in the grass right next to a mid power pad). It's been said on these forums often, but moral of the story is once again that the best way to engage kids is to engage multiple kids.
Although facilitating easy on-site construction has been a big focus of mine, increasingly I wouldn't worry about kids building their own rockets. I believe the Syracuse club also hold to that philosophy in their frequent kids events---they're quite specifically fly-it/take-its, not make-it/take-its. If the kids are into building that's great, but otherwise they'll come to it if you get them hooked. Put a rocket in their hands, let 'em fly it, and they'll adopt it and love it just as much as if they built it. Enable them to decorate it and they're making their own thing and being creative and you've got an easy stepping stone toward building. Again, not a new insight. Lots of clubs have "rocket buckets" and so on for kids, and the hobby thrives on devotees giving rockets to newcomers to go launch. But for me personally it's somewhat of a shift I'm making.
Lastly, get a cheap pair of walkie-talkies. Those are always fun no matter what, but also give cautious kids a way to wander a bit on their own without getting too nervous about being away from you.
In any event, this was a great weekend for us, and Alice has been talking about rockets unprompted all week since. Pretty good return for a small investment in a box of stickers, tape, and markers.
thanks for the pictures.
