“Restoring planes is super cool, but the people who do that have to be really good at measuring. Without math, they wouldn’t be able to put all these planes back in the air,” told Tanna George, to the very enthusiastic students.
Asked if they liked maths, few of the children actually got in the spotlight with that one at the beginning; only later on did they get what it was all about. They spent the whole morning storing information that was coming from all directions. Lessons of science, math and engineering, touching gigantic planes and even pretending to be them, made their day a real adventure.
The little ones visited the WestPac Restorations, a company that deals with damaged aircraft and founded by Bill Klaers who also helped at the opening of the museum in 2012.
Benjamin Grunenwald found it cool enough that ” they can restore planes they find buried and make a new model instead of just having an old, dirty bird.”
The program, which works with the Colorado Consortium for Earth and Space Science Education, was funded through a grant of $140,800 offered by the Colorado Division of Aeronautics, The Gazette reports.
The teachers are provided with ways to adapt the curriculum requirements to practical lessons about science and technology themes during Second World War.
Students are happy to find out more about different wing styles, about the principles of lift and drag while putting together model airplanes, about healthy eating and how to build bombers out of Legos.
But kids didn’t go unprepared to the National Museum of World War II Aviation. Way before the time of their arrival, the young students had many tasks and assignments they had to complete while at school. They had to read and write about airplane and to try to figure out how the technology behind them works.
Not only that the tours are completely free of charge but they are also grade-level appropriate. While the very little ones will be sitting with their teachers in the pilot’s seat and try to decide what they have to do – if the plane should lift, or if it should drop, the older ones will experience a different feeling when they will get to fly in a simulator.
“I liked finding out how parts of the plane work. I learned that some of the planes can hold bombs in their stomach,” said Ashton Ramirez from the Globe Charter School.