This Saturday is the next Soar Together: Family Day at the National Air and Space Museum. This is a fun event for anyone interested in aviation and space exploration. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center will offer fun activities designed to help families connect to the planes and artifacts in the hangar-like setting at the Chantilly museum. This month’s theme is Movies about Air and Space.
The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum holds six on-site family days throughout the year. Three take place at the museum in Washington D.C., and three are held at Udvar-Hazy.
“We know that families have a lot that they have to deal with. We want to make coming to the museum easier for them. These family days are a way for us to do that, to help support learning, to help support the interest that their kids may have or spark interests,” said Gale Famisan Robertson, a family learning education specialist at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.
Each family day correlates to what the museum is highlighting during the month. For March, that is movies. Udvar Hazy is featured in at least one film, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.” More importantly, the museum has a collection of props, models, and replicas with movie tie-ins. Visitors can see a model of the mother ship from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and a Boeing CV2 Cargo Air Vehicle that has been mounted with an X-wing “body shell” from “Star Wars.” The museum also has a Grumman F-14 Tomcat, the same fighter aircraft model used in the movie “Top Gun.”
On Saturday, Tom Paone, the museum’s lighter-than-air curator, will discuss how models are used in filming and how and why the museum collects them. He will reference a model of the airship Hindenburg used in the 1970s movie “The Hindenburg.”
Younger children (4 to 8) can participate in story time. This month’s book is “The Littlest Airplane,” by Brooke Hartman.
“The book talks about how airplanes have different jobs. There’s a fighter jet; there’s a passenger airplane,” said Famisan Robertson. “Crop dusters are built to fly slow and low to the ground. So we read the book, and then there’s an activity where kids can think about what, how they would create a cartoon character out of an airplane.”
The museum has fun and fast aircraft to inspire kids as they make their cartoon planes. One example is an air tractor crop duster painted to resemble Dusty Crop Hopper from the movie “Planes.” There is a similar, but more challenging activity for older kids. They will learn how to make storyboards and assemble them to create a storyline.
Families can also enjoy a free showing of the IMAX movie “Journey to Space” at 1:40 p.m. Sir Patrick Stewart, who played Capt. Jean Luc Picard in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” narrates the documentary. Viewers will learn the challenges and triumphs NASA and the space community have faced since the space shuttle program ushered in a new era in space.
Families who can’t make it to the museum can still visit the National Air and Space Museum’s Soar Together Family Day page online. There, they will find an “activities to do anywhere” button. This page has space facts, videos, science experiments to try, and book recommendations that coincide with each family day theme. Past family day pages stay active, making this a great resource for any budding space explorer.
Family Day is free, but registration is required for story times, which occur at 10 a.m., and 1 p.m. Parking at Udvar-Hazy is $15. Next month’s Soar Together Family Day: Aerospace in Miniature will also be at Udvar-Hazy on April 25.
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