Carnegie Science Center

Last Monday, after dropping Daddy off at a client's, we headed to Carnegie Science Center. This has been a hands-down favorite ever since Lexie and Ashlyn were Little Bit's age! One minor disappointment was discovering that none of the exhibits have changed since last time we were there (over a year ago). I'm not sure what's up with that, in the past, they've changed more than once a year. Perhaps budget cuts, but it's too bad, part of our love of this museum is learning new things every time we go. Little Bit still had a blast, but the older girls have been often enough that the main draw (at least in the main museum building) is to see what's new.

One area that never gets old there is the Sports zone. A whole separate building full of interactive sports type stuff. To make it even better, when we go on a week day during the school year, we generally have the Sports zone almost to ourselves! There are very short lines, if any. Little Bit's favorite is the big trampoline. I think she went on it 8 times all together that day. By the last time, when she got there the employee just laughed and said "you know the drill" instead of going over the steps to get her ready to jump.

She was also willing to try the rock wall this year, though she didn't go very far up. She DID find out that it's fun to rappel back down, so she climbed up (just 5 or 6 feet) several times and rappelled back down.

Lexie and Ashlyn have been climbing that rock wall since they were Little Bit's age or a little older. So they can easily climb to the top of the 2 easy climbs, and get very close to the top (there are hand/foot holds missing that make them not quite tall enough, even now) of the medium and hard climbs.

Lexie also did the way up in the air bike thing again (both Lexie and Ashlyn did it last time we were there (that was the first time they were tall enough to do it).  Technically it was closed, but when Lexie asked about it, the girl said she could do it since there wasn't anyone (other than Ashlyn) there who was even tall enough (I think there was one other kid and his parents in the whole building). To give some perspective, the yellow beam going through the rock wall in the picture above is the beam the bike is on. So it's about 15 ft in the air. It's attached to the beam, and you're buckled in, so you can't actually fall off of it, it's just the whole heights thing. The employee who let Lexie do it, was impressed that Lexie went the whole length of it and back. She said most people only go part way and get scared and come back.

Since we didn't spend as much time at the regular exhibits as we would have if there'd been new stuff there, we decided to go to a "class" on making ice cream. It was nothing too earth shattering, just demonstrated making ice cream by shaking it in a bag of ice/salt, and then also demonstrated making it using dry ice. But was somewhat interesting. I would have liked her to get into more of the science of WHY you put salt in with the ice, for example. And what dry ice is. But oh well . . . the big girls already know it, and Little Bit probably wouldn't have paid that close attention to the "why it works" parts anyway. Little Bit did go up and help make the ice cream in a bag.

All in all, it was a very fun day!