Homeschool Mami's World

Today is the 20th Anniversary of the Challenger Disaster. Every time a shuttle goes up now (especially since the more recent Columbia disaster) I pray and worry and wonder all at once.

Although an entire crew of astronauts died, everyone best remembers the New Hampshire school teacher, Christa McAuliffe. In December we visited the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium in Concord, NH and enjoyed the hands-on exhibits and watched a planetarium show. CNN has brief article about her. I didn't realize that she was originally from Framingham and graduated from Framingham State. I also just learned about Challenger Learning Centers which are all over the country, but there is one right at FSC, the Christa McAuliffe Center. They have programs there for grades 5-8. If my kids were older, we would definitely check it out.

My son, Jedi Knight, is fascinated by space (not just Star Wars) and we are constantly getting books on space shuttles and astronauts at the library. I even woke him up early last summer ago when the shuttle Discovery landed safely, piloted by the able Eileen Collins. We pulled out the globe (of course--we're addicted to geography) and I showed him where they landed it in California at Edwards Airforce Base, where NASA Mission Control is in Houston, and where the Kennedy Space Center is in Florida. We also talked about the fact that a plane was going to fly the shuttle piggy-back style back to Florida. He was talking about that for weeks.

Here's to the final frontier...

Homeschool Mami