On the grounds of Pioneer Airport, across the grass strip from the EAA AirVenture Museum, is KidVenture. A tent out on the ramp, and many of the hangars, are filled with exhibits and hands-on activities for all the budding pilots and aircraft engineers out there.

Whether it’s fabricating parts for a plane, building a rocket, flying a simulator, learning about aerodynamics, or simply watching a cartoon character talk about the fun of flying, there’s plenty going on. We visited with some of the kids exploring KidVenture.

Gracy Rohl is building a rocket. She and her dad are adding fins and a nose, to a white tube, in the hopes of possibly shooting it into the sky later.

Gracy is 7 years old and from Balaton, Minnesota.

She apparently likes the rockets because before building this one, she’d built another. "It was like a different rocket over there," she said. When asked if she plans to become a pilot, she’s certain: "Yeah, my dad’s a pilot."

Flying seems so familiar to this 7-year-old that she has a simple description of the flying her family does. "Sometimes we just go out for lunch."

Regine, enjoying EAA KidVenture.

Regine is a fifth-grader from Montreal, Quebec. She’s building a wooden propeller. As her mom and brother look on, her dad is helping her with the tools, shaping the wood. But Regine is doing just fine.

"It’s a little bit tough, but it’s fun," says Regine, for whom English is a second language.

Regine attends Academy St. Therese in Montreal. Of the full-sized aircraft here at AirVenture, her favorite plane is the Achilles. "It’s big!"

Back home her family owns a Zenith, which they like to fly on family vacations. They’ve been here in Oshkosh since Monday and have been all over the grounds. But they’re still looking forward to visiting the warbirds and the ultralights.

Before starting on the propeller, "I built a plane. Sometimes it fell down on the ground, but it sometimes it fly."

Marek Travnikar is a fifth-grader from Mills Elementary School in Austin, Texas. Here at KidVenture Marek is also shaping a propeller. Earlier in the day he built a plane.

"I built this metal plane. It came out pretty good. It wasn’t a big plane; it was a little sheet metal plane. It dropped like a brick."

His family doesn’t have a plane just now, but Marek has a plan. "We don’t fly, ’cause we don’t have a plane. But we’re planning on building one. An RV-6." Why the RV? "It’s a good size. It’s not too expensive to build. It’s fun to fly."

On a recent birthday he got a special gift: A Young Eagles ride. "That was fun. We went out over a bunch of sandy mountains. We flew from Austin to San Marcos. It had a nice sunset that day. It was on my birthday."

Josh Corbin is visiting KidVenture, and the United States, from Peru. His parents are missionaries, and right now he’s staying with his brother, Jason, here in the States. Now he’s building a model rocket; earlier he made a balsa airplane.

Josh is 11 years old. In Peru he’s home-schooled; in the States he attends the fifth grade in the Stoneborough Westland Methodist School.

One part of KidVenture that he particularly liked was taking his model plane out on the grass and flying it.

Over in AirVenture, Josh enjoys walking around and looking at the military planes.

Mary Bailey is 13, and we think maybe she’s feeling a little too grown up for KidVenture. But nevertheless she’s hard at work assembling a model rocket with her dad.

She’s an eighth-grader in Osage City Middle School in Kansas. Over at AirVenture she really liked "the planes with the sharks and tigers on them. They look cool."

Visit the Around the Field Archive at www.AroundTheField.net.