USS Midway in San Diego

A couple months ago, we were lucky enough to spend some time in San Diego. I decided to incorporate some of the activities we would do into our homeschooling. Our hotel was fairly close to the USS Midway and quickly decided that museum would be one of our activities.
For homeschooling, I looked on their website and found A TON of information about the place. I typed up some questions about information I was able to find and then used that worksheet as a way to test my son's ability to find information on a website. Now, this may not be something learned in public school, but I definitely think it's a real world skill that should be learned.

Now, on to our experience. It was about a ½ mile walk (it took us about 15 minutes) to the USS Midway. Lucky for us, kids were free during the month of October so we were able to take advantage of that.
We walked onto the ship and immediately watched the 15 minute movie to the right. It was pretty interesting and told about the battle of Midway to show why the Navy fought so hard to name this carrier after the famous battle. Then, we walked over to the information desk to get Owen’s Junior Pilot quiz. They told us we needed to get the free audio tour lanyards so we did that. The questions on the quiz were labeled by location, which made it pretty easy to find the ones we needed. You point the little thing on the end of the lanyard at the audio thing you want to listen to and then hold it up to your ear like a cell phone to listen to it. Then, for Owen, he just had to answer a multiple choice question about something from that audio clip.
We walked around the hangar deck first and were able to get in some of the model aircrafts. I think that was Owen’s favorite part. We came across the Air-Combat 360, which is like a flight simulator where you get inside and one person pilots the aircraft while another person shoots at other aircraft. At first, Owen seemed skeptical, but then wanted to do it. However, he threw a huge hissy fit when he actually got in it. He was screaming about how he didn’t want to do it anymore and started whining big time. I was so embarrassed. I couldn’t believe he was acting like that. Fortunately, the employees there were super nice. They were very patient with him and helped us convince him that he would have fun. Tom would pilot the whole time and wouldn’t ever take him upside down. He eventually did do it though and seemed to somewhat enjoy himself. Now, normally, I wouldn't force my kid to do something he didn't want to do, but he had already told us he did want to do it and we'd payed for it, too. Plus, I knew it wouldn't actually be scary.

We grabbed ourselves a bottle of water from the cafe before heading down below deck. It was a huge maze down there. And there was so much to see! We climbed down lots of flights of stairs and then back up! We saw the galley, the sick bay, the chapel, the wardroom, the captain’s quarters, and everything in between. We even saw the brig (jail). It seriously took us over an hour to walk through the whole area.

We then made our way up to the flight deck where Tom and Owen took forever walking around the admiral quarters. I sat and watched some videos instead. My feet were getting tired. When they were back, we walked around some more where Owen was able to touch and get in some of the aircrafts. He loved it. I wish we had been able to see the bridge, but the only way you can see it is to take a 30 minute tour, which had a line of about 20 minutes, and we just didn’t have time for that.

When we were done looking at everything on the flight deck, we walked back down to the hangar deck and looked through the gift shop. Owen was able to find a replica USS Midway that he thought was really cool so he bought that.

Then, we walked back over to the information booth where Owen was presented (with a cute little ceremony) with his wings for getting all the questions right on his little quiz. It was adorable and he loved it.

Then, we walked back to the hotel. We were at the USS Midway for about 3 hours and we needed every second of it. We truly could have spent about 4 hours there if we had the chance. So when they say you need 3-4 hours to see everything, they’re not kidding.