Acquara Independent School

Oh, what a weird day.

So, I have everything all organized to get Avery to school for all day (he needed extra stuff for his nap), A and N and I and everyone’s lunches and stuff to get to OMSI by 10:00. I leave at 8:20 to drop Avery off. He is pissed because he knows something is up and the kids are going somewhere he doesn’t get to go. Drop him off, I’m good on time, get downtown to transfer to a bus, and….I don’t have my buspass, wallet, ID, OMSI card, money, nothing. (It fell out of my backpack at home.) I can’t even get on the bus. We were going to be a half hour early and then I thought we couldn’t even make the class at all. I thought about walking across the Hawthorne bridge, which would solve the bus problem but still was unsure about getting into OMSI. So, I texted Nik and he said he could meet me downtown and give me his bus pass and debit card. So, I jump back on the max to get closer to where he can meet me, he gets on a bus and comes downtown from work, we meet for 30 seconds, he jumps on another bus to go back to work, and I have to walk six blocks and jump on a bus to go across the river. By that time, my half hour grace period was eaten up. We were 15 minutes late and I was for sure we were going to miss the class, but one of the (VERY NICE!) VH parents waited for us and we made it, and it hadn’t really even started yet.

The content of the class was stuff my kids already knew, which Naim was being an elitist snob about. But Aaron just answered all the questions. It was about the solar system. I told Naim that even if he already knew it, it was neat to see everyone pretend to be planets and rotate/revolve around each other, see the relative size of the planets with clay models (and a cardboard sun because that would be a LOT of clay.) take a tape measure and see the relative distance of the planets down a hallway, and see all the planets on the big globe. Aaron enjoyed it and Naim was ok with it.

Then, about 20 minutes after the class ended, alarms went off and we were evacuated from OMSI. As per usual, I could not hear, see nor understand what was going on at first, but I saw the teacher who taught their class and attached myself to her. We went down a back fire escape and into the parking lot. Aaron and Naim were in a tizzy, and I had to explain to them that we needed to follow directions and get out of the building first and THEN we could figure out what is going on. I’m glad I didn’t have Avery, though. Because getting him down like, 4 flights of rickety fire escape stairs would have been a bitch. They let us back in after about a half an hour or so. I guess they had construction people doing work for the streetcar and some wiring got cut and tripped the alarm, but no real danger. A cook let us back in through a back door past dumpsters and the kitchen and OMSI sort of storage areas, which the kids thought was super cool because it was employees only. The cook was really nice and helped chill them out about the whole thing.

Afterwards, kids did the usual looking around OMSI. I got addicted to playing with these tanks of water with different sized iron bits in them and magnets. We also watched the movie called LIFE: A Cosmic Journey, that was in the planetarium and narrated by Jodie Foster. It was about how life began in the stars after the big bang and how it all came together on earth. Very evolutionary minded, and also talked about the possibility of microbial life migrating from Mars to Earth.  And we made it through the day.

So did Avery. I checked in with Goddard at around 2:00 and he was napping and they said he was doing fine. I picked him up around 5:00 and he was very happy. Here is his report.

Filed under: Aaron, Avery, Class/Camp, Early Intervention, Fieldtrip, Fieldtrips, Industrial and Technical, Naim, Science | Tagged: Goddard School, OMSI, OMSI Lab | Leave a comment »