Highlands Museum has the following description of what they are calling Super Saturdays on their website.
“The museum will be holding science and history workshops at the museum every Saturday at 2:00pm. We are calling it Super Saturdays! The workshops are geared toward elementary and middle school aged children, but would be a great thing to do with the entire family!
Each workshop will be held two times so hopefully you can make it to your favorite one!
November
5th and 26th Wings of WWII
Students will learn about the evolution of aircraft as weapons during WWII and how it changed the war and brought about an American victory. Students will get to make models of planes to take home and will finish off their day by flying a scale model B-25 Bomber across the Mezzanine of the Museum!
With some of the workshops, we provide supplies for each child. To help us cover the cost, it will be $3 per person.”
This sounded really interesting, so we took our boys to it. Here are some pictures of what they got to see & do while at the workshop.
I’m extremely happy that the boys had a great time and want to go back to more of the workshops held at the museum. We’ll be more than happy to take them to future outings. Although I have some real concerns about the way they describe the workshops and the cleanliness of it.
This one wasn’t very well planned. We stood around where we were told that the instructor would meet us and finally just happened to see a couple of guys fooling around with a plane. Well after having to ask about it we were told that was the instructor and to go on upstairs. I don’t think it would have hurt to let us parents know that the class was upstairs to begin with and they really should have introduced themselves and said come on. Something. Anything.
After that was sorted out … they had a great time talking with the guy doing the presentation, but there was a lot of time wasted with the airplane they were “flying” across the Mezzanine. It was a plane on a string and there was something wrong with that string so the plane wouldn’t “fly” right. So there was some down time between kids getting a turn. Most didn’t mind as they ran off doing other things or looking at other stuff. They were super cute when it was their turn to fly though! They also got to drop a “bomb” on a floating boat (brag inserted here ... Walter was the only one to make it into the water & bomb a boat! LoL many of the kids got it in the water but he was real happy about actually hitting the boat ... that's my boy!) … well if you pulled the string at the right time you would hit the water … but it was hard. That certainly would take some practice … hit or miss though it was fun for the kids.
Then it was downstairs to “make models of planes”. It was a large sheet of paper. They made a big paper airplane. What!?! Yes a big paper airplane. That is so NOT “Students will get to make models of planes to take home” … It’s not a bad thing … what kid who likes planes doesn’t like to make paper airplanes? Especially a big one! I just think the wording on the website is very misleading. I didn’t expect a real good model of an airplane, but I sure as heck didn’t expect they would just give them a piece of paper either. Ah well, my boys have been playing with their's all weekend ... they aren't planes anymore though! hahaha
Something has to be said for them trying to draw in people to their workshops, but fudging the truth about what is going on doesn’t make a real good impression and a little prep work would go along way for the workshop to run smoothly. But like I said, the boys had a ball with it and we’ll do it again mainly because it’s of interest to them and when you’re homeschooling you want your kids to be interested in all kinds of learning.
Of special note to parents … I wouldn’t let my children play around downstairs unless you have looked it over pretty well. I understand it’s an area for children to play and learn and that it wouldn’t be spotless, but there is a huge cleanliness issue going on down there. All the clothes and shoes need to see a washer immediately! The toys and such need to be thrown into a sink full of soapy bleach water. The phone at the McDonald’s station was just plain nasty … for one it’s broken and should be thrown away … after picking it up though … ew … you can tell it hasn’t even been wiped off in forever. The dispensers with the hand sanitizer in them were empty too.
I so dislike having to give this a not so great review. We love taking our boys out and about to places like this that having a potential for such learning. Finding local places is an extra plus. So anytime I can find a local place that if offering something like this we love to go and I so wanted to be able to brag about our local wonders!
I believe in second chances though, so ... here's hoping we just caught the museum at a bad time and we have a better experience with the next workshop!
Neither of my boys believe anymore ... which makes me a little sad. I can still find the "magic" in Christmas through Santa, and the lights, and songs of the season ... and wished my boys did too ... but they have older brothers who didn't think twice about opening their big mouths to ruin it. Sammy said he didn't like it that Santa was talking to him. "I'm 9 years old ... sheesh" LoL 
