They spent the week learning about space and rockets — and it paid off with a bang. Or, really, a blast. Kids from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Benton and Franklin Counties’ Music & Arts Center fashioned two-liter plastic bottles into sleek space craft, complete with cardboard wings held down by duct tape, and then launched them with help from water, a bicycle pump and simple physics. Jadehn Johnson’s handmade rocket “went high and then flew that direction,” the 13-year-old said last week, pointing toward a fence at Keewaydin Park in Kennewick, a few minutes after blast off.
Jadehn has spent the summer participating in activities at the Music & Arts Center, from negotiating a “laser” obstacle course — the lasers were actually strings — during a week with a spy theme, to creating “messy art.” That activity, said Malaya Marvin, 11, “is kind of self-explanatory.” Malaya, Jadehn and other club kids spoke enthusiastically about the time they’ve had at the Music & Arts Center. That’s a specialty of the club — providing learning and enrichment opportunities in a way that, to kids, just seems like fun. Read more.