Another Day of Museum Fun

Monday we went to the Carnegie Science Center. All 3 girls had great fun. We went to an "Omnimax" (like Imax) movie on Shackleton (Antarctic explorer from the early 1900s). A couple of weeks ago we listened to the Your Story Hour series on Shackleton's expedition, then a couple days after that, we spent a day on Antarctica during our world geography unit. So the Omnimax movie on his expedition was a nice wrap up to our unintended "unit study" on Shackleton. It was truly amazing to see just how rough and rugged the seas and land is down there!

There was a "little kid" area for Little Bit to play in, and while it was only for children up to age 6, it did allow "families" to accompany the young children, so the big girls could join us. Little Bit headed straight for the water table (I guess her dunking the day before didn't change her love for water in the least!). To make it even better, there were tons of little yellow "ping pong" balls floating in the water. Water AND balls, what more could a 15 mo old ask for?!?!?! She would have been perfectly happy to spend the entire day there, scooping up balls, floating them back in teh water, scooping up water and dumping it on the floor . . . she was truly in heaven!

There was also a whole area with the kind of balls they have in ball pits, that could be put on conveyor belts and moved around in wheel barrows and such, that was a big hit too!

The little kid area also had tables with a bristle blocks type blocks (only not as good as bristle blocks, IMO, they were "ridges" instead of "pegs" so only went together if you lined the ridges up. Still fun.

And there were mirrors and drums and tunnels to climb through and big foam blocks to build with and foam rocks to "dig" up with a back-hoe thing, and a "vegetable garden" to pick the vegetables and put them in a big canvas bag that you could pull up with a pulley . . . and plain wooden blocks, and a small climbing wall . . .

Another nice feature of the little kid area was the "quiet corner" which, admittedly wasn't very QUIET since it wasn't a sound proof room LOL. BUT it was painted soothing colors and was around a corner from all the chaos so at least it was "peaceful" compared to the chaos of everywhere else. There were read aloud books, and puzzles and things. I loved the sight of all 3 girls sitting there quietly (for them anyway, and there wasn't anyone else in the area, for them to be bothering) working on a puzzle.

After we moved on from the little kid area there was water play for bigger kids (with pipes to build "fountains" and such. And "games" that taught about toxic household substances. And

aquariums full of fish and a thing you could look through to see "how a fish sees things" and a big room full of all things robotic and an earthquake simulator and a table where you could build "buildings" out of various materials and then push a button and the table "shook" like an earthquake so you could see if your building would withstand an earthquake and stuff on soundwaves and tornados and flight and . . . I don't remember what all else.

There was a huge model train layout of the city of Pittsburgh that the girls walked around 3 or 4 times, trying to see EVERYTHING. That room with fewer people and the "white noise" of the model trains going around was the extra "push" Little Bit needed to give in and take a nap in the sling, ahhhh . . .

There was also a real submarine to tour through. A2 was most interested in the kitchen, and how she would cook for lots of people in such a small space.

Thanks to Little Bit's nap, we were able to stay till closing time (but still didn't see EVERYTHING). And had another great day of learning!