New museum exhibits often foster excitement and increase tourism and, since it opened last fall, "Th

Take Advantage of 4th Night Free Lodging at Okemo Resort Jan 22, 2015 Okemo Resort in Vermont is running a special through the end of the winter season for a 4th night free lodging after booking 3 nights. more
He was moved to tears when he saw the Space Shuttle pictures of united kingdom parliment Endeavour fly over his school on its way to its new home at the California Science Center   and even more excited when he could walk around the gargantuan space craft — 122 feet long — at the museum, touching tires that flew in space, peering up at the tiles crucial to re-entry, inspecting pictures of united kingdom parliment a space potty and galley. (Tortillas, it turns out, are the perfect space food because there were no crumbs pictures of united kingdom parliment to fly around in the gravity-less environment.)
New museum exhibits often foster excitement and increase tourism and, since it opened last fall, “The Space Shuttle Endeavour Exhibition” has done both in spades. pictures of united kingdom parliment (Did I mention there is no entrance fee to the wonderful hands-on museum, though you can pay $2 for a timed entrance to Endeavour?) But besides garnering excitement and enthusiasm, this exhibit has the potential to change children’s lives.
“The shuttle coming here opened a world of possibilities for these kids, many of whom are the children of immigrants,” explained Amy Davis, Taylor and Richard’s fifth-grade teacher. Suddenly, they saw the possibilities of a career pictures of united kingdom parliment in math, science, technology and engineering. “It was so hard for them to grasp from a textbook,” said Davis. “Seeing the shuttle in front of them makes all the difference.”
pictures of united kingdom parliment The children’s enthusiasm and engagement spurred Davis to thank the Science Center in a letter. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart for investing time and money so a small, 10-year-old, inner-city child could see that dreams can come true and for giving him hope in his future,” she wrote. That missive, in turn, inspired the museum to feature the Century Park fifth graders’ Endeavour projects in their shuttle exhibit.
pictures of united kingdom parliment An astronaut raised in California came to speak to the children at school. And now, four of Davis’ students, including Richard and Taylor, have been offered scholarships to a week at Space Camp this summer in Huntsville, Ala. (Davis is working on sponsors to cover the kids’ flights.) Keep in mind that these are kids who haven’t been to camp, who typically don’t have the opportunity to go on family pictures of united kingdom parliment vacations. “I’m most excited about living like an astronaut,” Richard pictures of united kingdom parliment said.
The Endeavour, which was the doomed space shuttle Challenger’s replacement and the only shuttle to be named by schoolchildren, arrived with great fanfare at the Science Center on Oct. 31, carried on the back of a specially equipped Boeing 747 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and paraded through the heart of urban Los Angeles as 1.5 million people turned out to watch and cheer.
The other three shuttles are on public display on the East Coast — The Enterprise (a prototype that never actually went into space) at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum Complex in New York, the Discovery at the National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C., and the Atlantis in Florida at the Kennedy Space Center .
“For 30 years (19 years in the case of the Endeavour) humans crossed the threshold from being tentative about space exploration with long periods of time during which there were no humans in space to an era of permanent human presence in space (at the International Space Center),” said Dr. Kenneth Phillips, curator for Aerospace Science at the California Science Center.
In the last six months, more than 1 million people, including thousands of kids, have turned out to see Endeavour at the Science Center — remarkable when you consider that until now, the Science Center’s annual attendance was 1.6 million, observed William Harris, the museum’s senior vice president of development. Harris escorted me around the Space Shuttle Endeavour Exhibition as excited kids on field trips gawked and chattered as they checked pictures of united kingdom parliment out spacesuits, a moon rock, earlier space capsules and articles pictures of united kingdom parliment astronauts carried with them in space (a small Slinky, beads blessed by the Dali Lama, a New York Giants cap). They also inspected the control room that monitored the first minutes of every shuttle launch from nearby Canoga Park, Calif., learning that all of the orbiters were built locally.
“Its size is the coolest thing ever,” said 14-year-old Samantha, a member of the Science pictures of united kingdom parliment Center’s Curator Kids Club, a group created for kids who live in the under served communities around the museum. “You can compare how small you are next to it!”
The shuttle, said Harris, is single-handedly turning the California pictures of united kingdom parliment Science Center in L.A.’s Exposition Park   into a must-see attraction for those visiting Los Angeles   and spurring more people to visit Exposition Park and the neighboring L.A. County Natural History Museum with its amazing dinosaur exhibits.
(Read more about Eileen’s trip to Southern California in her travel diaries. She was researching her latest book, the “Kid’s Guide to Los Angeles,” which will be out in the fall. “Kid’s Guides” are now available to NYC, Orlando and Washington, D.C., from Globe Pequot Press.)
Taking the Kids publishes two e-newsletters per month, filled with information and advice for families traveling with children as well as tips on destinations and special travel offers from sponsors.