[Stylist] Newest Draft of Apollo 11 Narrative

[Chris Kuell]

Hey Tina,

I have to give you a lot of credit for not being afraid of endless
revisions. And I understand your anxiety over the ages of your audience.
Best I can tell, you should plan for an 8ish audience, and let the chips
fall where they do.

I understand Barbara's comments, and think the idea of competition and a
race will resonate with kids. In the background section, I'd delete the part
about the Gemini twins, as that's probably over most of their heads.

One tactile prop you might use is small rope to compare and demonstrate
distances. You could have a 3 inch piece and say this represents how far it
is across America, from New York to San Francisco. You could then have a
piece that's28 inches long and say the piece  represents the distance of one
lap around our planet. The last, long piece would be 239 inches, or almost
20 feet long. The kids could touch the pieces, you could even have 2 kids
hold the long rope so they get an idea of how far away the moon really is.
It might also give you a chance to get them up and involved, which is good
for keeping their attention.

Another thought is to bring an Estes rocket or two. When my son was young we
built a kit called the Big Bertha, which cost about $12. It's a cardboard,
plastic and balsa wood rocket that really can launch, but it also resembles
the Gemini and Apollo rockets. If you had a sighted person build you one or
two, it might make for a good prop. The kids could feel it and get an idea,
as they might not know what a rocket looks like.

I've pasted an edited version of your beginning to consider.

Good luck.

Chris


Fifty years ago, three astronauts--Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael
Collins--were the first men to walk on the Moon. How did it happen? Why did
we go to the Moon?
(add launch sounds)

The United States is a proud country, and we always want to be the best. So
does Russia. Before any human beings had ever been to space, we were in a
race with Russia to see who could get there first. And Russia beat us.   

Then, back in 1961, President John F. Kennedy had an idea. Let's put a man
on the Moon and get him safely back to Earth. And let's do it before 1970,
which was only 9 years away.

There wasn't much time and going to the moon was a huge challenge. The Moon
is about a quarter of a million miles away from us. That's almost 10 laps
around the entire planet Earth. How could we send a man to the Moon and get
him back safely? We'll find out in a moment, but first, let's do an
experiment.
(have kids feel the ropes)
 
We started by taking small steps to prepare. NASA is the space program and
they began making rockets to launch astronauts into space. They used a small
rocket for a program they called Mercury. With the Mercury program engineers
learned how to build rockets that could take astronauts in Earth orbit and
the astronauts got to see how it felt to fly in space. They ate space foods
that were in tubes like toothpaste tubes! Would you like to eat food from a
toothpaste tube?

Once we practiced sending one astronaut into orbit at a time, NASA wanted to
send  two astronauts into space. They called this new program the Gemini
program, and it used an even bigger rocket. With the Gemini program,
astronauts learned how to "walk in space" by floating outside the spacecraft
with a space suit, tethered to the rocket by a strong rope. They floated
like you might float in a swimming pool. And they learned how to connect (or
dock) , two spacecraft in orbit. Astronauts needed to know how to do these
skills in order to land on the moon.
 
During the Mercury and Gemini programs, astronauts got really good at riding
in rockets and working in their spacecraft while orbiting the Earth.
And remember, they learned how to connect two different spacecraft together
in space.  The next phase in the space program was going to be a big one.
Astronauts needed to leave Earth's orbit and actually travel a quarter of a
million miles to get to the Moon. The moon program was called Apollo and
this time, three astronauts would travel together in an even larger rocket.
Up to this point, astronauts had never left Earth's orbit before. Could we
get astronauts safely to the Moon?

Apollo 8 was the first mission where astronauts traveled all the way to the
Moon. They didn't land on the Moon, but they orbited the Moon and came home
safely back to Earth. This mission proved that we could get astronauts
safely to the Moon and back and was a critical step before the Apollo 11
moon landing.