Science Museum Field Trip
Since I did not put 2+2 together to realize I was coming down with the PLAGUE yesterday, I took my eldest and 3 other kids her age to the science museum for the afternoon. My neighbor was kind enough to trade me her two oldest (5g, 7b) for my two boys (1.75 & 4). We also brought my cousin (8b) so it worked out very nicely for the girls to be partners and the boys to be partners.
BTW:I have the kids be partners whenever I go places with a bunch of kids because I refuse to lose other people's kids! Each partnership is responsible to stay together and to stay with me. And two or three sets of partners are easier to keep track of than four or six individual kids. I also usually make them hold hands but didn't make the 7&8 yr old boys hold hands. This has worked very well for me for numerous outings and I recommend it.
We started out with J turning in her bison fur and report to the Collector's Corner. She did a nice job writing out her answers to the 5 W ?s and we also added a uses section (pillows, headdresses, rope) which she filled out with the help of her Jr Naturalist workbook. The staff people there are wonderful, they pretty much ignored me and just talked to J like a fellow scientist. They praised her beautful report and gave her 2,500 points (I think that is what she got last time, too.) She didn't purchase anything with her points today so they got added to the 1000 that she had left in her account. I have overheard her and her cousin plotting to combine their points and purchase large quantities of fool's gold, but have not asked them about it. Don't want to be charged as a co-conspirator or anything!
We then visited the new Animal Grossology exhibit. That was so cool! Even cooler than the Chinasaurs. The exhibits were colorful, hands-on and potty-humorish- but all in the name of science! The kids enjoyed the exhibit exploring the cows four stomachs ending, of course, in a cow toot! Also the talking fly explaining how it throws up on food before it eats it. We will definitely back to this many times, I am glad that it will be there up until next school year because there was way too many people there yesterday!
We finished up by watching the new Omni Movie, Bears (if you hit the link be sure to check out the educational materials - they are marvelous!). This movie was great! It focused on helping people understand and be less afraid of bears so it was not scary, but mostly informative and cute. There were some episodes of bears play-fighting and some fish-blood but the kids with me did fine and I plan to take Zeff as well. The scenery of Alaska where much of the movie was shot was incredible and so beautiful on the big Omni screen.
My first clue that I was sick was that I was freezing to death and ended up forcing J to sit on my lap so she could keep me warm, during the movie. By the time we got home I knew I had a fever and was totally sick so I never did any of the enrichment activities from the website with the kids, but I hope to do some with J and M next week. And maybe the neighbor kids, might as well get as many kids enriched as possible, if I go to the work. I plan to do the Got Milk lesson from the website so I'll post how it goes if we do it.
Shout out to my cousin who came over when I called her and said "Get over her right now. *click*". She came and hung for over an hour watching my kids while I lay down in a misery of chills and sweating waiting for my tylenol-ibuprofen cocktail to kick in. Then ordered a pizza for us before she left. I LOVE YOU, RACHEL!