Kiss My Knits!

Many people have asked me how the Brownie meeting about space went. Well, it went great! However, there was an unforeseen event which, in hindsight, I should have expected. So here’s how the whole meeting went!

A lot of the girls are learning about the moon right now, so that was excellent timing in terms of things being top of mind for them. We meet in the classroom of one of our girls, so she was very excited to get the report she’d written about the moon and read it to us. Then they drew up on the whiteboard about how the eclipse was going to happen. They had the moon and earth reversed, but we got it all worked out. I explained that it wasn’t really going to be black, it was going to be red! That’s because the rays of the sun will pass through the atmosphere around the earth, and it’ll filter the light. They were impressed. Go me.

Then we all sat on the carpet for our trip to the moon. I had very carefully worked out ahead of time what jobs I would ask the girls about, so that everybody would have a chance to participate. So it went something like this:

Me: Astronaut A, are we getting enough oxygen? Is there enough air in here for all of us?
A: Yes!
Me: Astronaut B, are our engines thrusting? Are they moving us forward through space?
B: Yes!
Me: Astronaut C, do we have enough fuel to get to the moon?
C: NO!!! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!
All: AAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!
Me: AAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!

Now how the heck did I not see that coming? Of course somebody was going to do that. Anyway, after some very un-astronaut-like running and screaming, we drifted along to the moon. Things on the moon weight about a sixth of what they weigh on earth, and the Brownies average about 60 pounds, so that was pretty easy to figure out. They were amazed to learn that they weighed about ten pounds. Some of them knew exactly how much they weighed, so they would say, “well, I weigh 65 pounds, so I must weigh 15 pounds on the moon!” So then we had to do a little math. While we did, we bounced around for a while, which was fun.

Then we put on our spacesuits. Our spacesuits consisted of a single ski glove each. We used a lawn grabber to pick up moon rocks and put them in clear plastic jars. The grabber was borrowed from friends, and wasn’t quite as high tech as the one pictured. In fact, it may have predated the actual moon launch. But that was fine, it served its purpose and was very much appreciated. The moon rocks were large pieces of gravel from our driveway and the jars were what I usually use to keep baking soda and other supplies in. Steve came home to a bunch of tupperware containers of miscellaneous white powders on the counter.

Once we were all done with that, we stowed our samples and got back into our spaceship. I said, “Wow, I’m thirsty now!” and one of the girls pointed out that we couldn’t have open drinks in the spaceship. We talked about zero gravity. Then I busted out the astronaut food I’d brought – CapriSun pouches. We had ten girls and ten pouches, so that worked out perfectly. They were so excited about the juice. The most ordinary things get exciting when you’re doing them in space.

Back on Earth, we talked about other astronauts who’ve gone into space. I had a printout of this site listing women who have gone into space and how long they’ve stayed up. The girls were amazed at how long people have stayed in space, and I got to show female role models without being overtly “WE WILL NOW LEARN ABOUT WOMEN’S HISTORY!” about it. I pointed out again, though, that there had been some astronauts who’d been Girl Scouts, like Mae Jemison and Sally Ride, so that was neat.

Then we talked more about the eclipse, and I gave them a take-home sheet I’d made, pictured right. Apparently this is something that some of the other girls had already done as homework, so they weren’t all over it the way they had been with the other stuff. One girl was, though, so that was nice. It also made me wonder how come these girls from the rich school get homework like that, and my daughter doesn’t bring home squat. Grr.

Anyway, all of this took slightly less time than I had anticipated, so the end of the meeting was occupied with distributing cookies and a little uncontrolled cavorting around the classroom. I don’t keep as tight a rein on them as I probably should. But everybody had a really good time, and we earned our Space Explorer Try-It (Brownie badge). Good meeting! And even better, someone else is running the next one. Yay!