Secret Garden

DIG IT: We're totally enjoying a warm welcome to Spring 2019. 

Yesterday, we visited a "Pea Patch" (community garden) in West Seattle. It's a small spot, easy to miss. But what a treasure! We had a picnic dinner and enjoyed it at a park table and benches. There were ornamental cherries in bloom. So pretty!

And there were lots of beds in baby steps, ready to start producing produce. Cool that part of the garden bolsters an area food bank.

AWESOME OPPORTUNITY: Thursday morning, we tuned into a live STEM in 30 webcast. It featured National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution curator Tom Lassman, who was ready to answer questions and talk about the future of commercial spaceflight. We watched via the STEM in 30 Facebook page, and viewers were encouraged to submit questions as a comment under the video feed post.

We were about 5 minutes late to the broadcast, but late was better than never. I was kind of mortified to see (per the Facebook graphic) that only TEN people were watching. :(

Fortunately, one of the 'ten' was an entire classroom somewhere. But still, seemed like under 50 people for such a cool event. :(

Anyway, we totally took advantage of the situation. CJ is currently enrolled in the Washington Aerospace Scholars program, and his next essay is supposed to be about what kind of aerospace-related career he might be interested in. CJ loves research and history, and is a really strong writer, so he's interested in museum curating and communications as it pertains to aerospace. We were watching via my desktop, so I posted the following question: "My son is interested in working as a museum curator in the future. Any advice from Mr. Lassman about college classes to take or pathways to pursue toward that goal?"

His question was answered post haste, and you can see it in the video below (fast forward to about 17 minutes in). Pretty cool to have access to ask Mr. Lassman a question, and CJ quoting that answer in his essay for Washington Aerospace Scholars will probably look pretty legit. 


Also worth noting: During the webcast, the host pointed people to a Smithsonian website: ISS Science. 

I gave it a brief look and, Wow! We'll definitely be visiting it in the future. Lots of great resources for teachers and engaging information for students of all ages.