Awesome Thoughts from our Blog

The wonderful thing about aviation is there are lots of opportunities to combine your interests and passion. You can be a pilot for airplanes, helicopters, or fighter jets. You can be an air traffic controller that assists pilots during their flights. Do you like to fix things? You can be an aircraft mechanic, or an aerospace engineer. You can manage an airport and ensure its safe operations, or you can explore space and be an astronaut. There are so many options.

Our guest blogger, Katie, is a student from FIRST Chesapeake, a nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring the next generation of technology leaders. Using the robot as the vehicle, FIRST Chesapeake reinforces Science and Math concepts through hands on learning while teaching valuable life skills such as leadership, teamwork, and creative thinking. FIRST Chesapeake impacts over 7,000 middle and high school students in DC, Virginia and Maryland.

Known as the “hardest fun you’ll ever have,” Katie competes on a local FIRST Robotics Competition team. Under strict rules, limited resources, and an intense six-week time limit, teams of 20 or more students are challenged to raise funds, design a team "brand," hone teamwork skills, and build and program industrial-size robots to play a difficult field game against like-minded competitors.

We are so delighted to be featured in the 2019 Spring Clothes for Kids article in The Daily Mom!  

We love outfits for girls that encourage them to be whoever they want to be. From astronauts to scientists, your little lady has a world of opportunity in front of her. Princess Awesome is innovating girls clothing, using patterns featuring all her favorite activities in styles that are perfect for both spring outings to the museum or even family Easter photos.

Let’s face it: for the first few years, we get to pick their clothes because it’s not as if they are going to say, Mother, I despise pink and wish you would not put it on my person. Thank you and good night.

No, they can’t, so we decorate their rooms with pink and green and decide that the theme for their room will be frogs, and we just have to wait for the day (she is two now, so maybe when she is 5?) she will say, “Mom, I don’t like frogs.” So at that point, maybe we will re-decorate with ducks and rockets….? Or something completely different?

An interview with children's authors Shannon and Dean Hale

Shannon and Dean: I think the idea of “princesses” that some parents react against is the submissive girl who does nothing but wait to be saved by a man. But in truth, there are almost no stories like that in the past fifty years. A princess is a girl with power—political power, social power. And a princess is a girl with fun accessories—like unicorn pets and sparkly gowns and fairy godmothers! I fear that some reactions against princesses are reactions against femininity—that the “best” girls are the ones who exhibit traditionally masculine traits and have traditionally masculine interests. I push back against that. Please don’t shame kids for having feminine interests or fascinations with princesses. Again, let them be both!

Eating something fun and delicious is often associated with celebrations. And eating pie on Pi Day seems especially appropriate given the many connections between the two words. But here is a new twist on the connection between these two words. The pie below turns out to be as irregular and unpredictable as the numbers that make up π.

These numbers represent only the FIRST 1,000 numbers of π. π is an irregular number, which means its numbers go on and on forever and will not repeat in any sort of pattern. If anything needed a nickname, it is π!

The numbers that make up π go on and on forever. And for centuries people have attempted to calculate and recite more and more digits of π. In 2016 a computer calculated 22,459,157,718,361 digits of π, the record so far. The current Guinness World Record for reciting π digits is held by Rajveer Meena who in 2015 and at the age of 21 recited 70,000 numbers in 9 hours and 27 minutes.

How long will you stay interested in Pi's digits?  Make a Pi necklace and find out!