We have been hitting it pretty hard the last couple of days with Sarah and Ezra in town, and so today we had a nice leisurely morning. The kids would tell you that it was the best day every because they got to do Minecraft.
After lunch, we put the twins to sleep and then myself, Clara, Jonas, Logan, Sarah, and Ezra all took off. Our destination today was the Museum of Science.
After doing some research, Jonathan and I decided to buy a Membership. With all the perks (including two hours of free parking, a discount at the gift shop and cafe, passes for the 3D theater and planetarium, etc.) we only need to go twice for it to be worth it. And it allowed us to get Sarah and Ezra in for free today! Huzzah!
Our first destination: the Hall of Human life. The kids really enjoyed this section. At the end of the day, I asked them to each share either three facts they had learned or their 3 favorite things that they had seen. Several of them mentioned that they were blown away by how much larger our brains are than other creatures’ brains. It definitely made an impression.
One of my favorite things from this section: Axolotl’s are capable of regrowing limbs if they lose them. This is currently being researched for future human application.
The next section we went to was the the Light House, which was all about light and optical illusions, etc. It brought back my physics days when I had to map out how light interacted with different shapes of lenses (shudder, physics was not my favorite)
Next, we went to the Science in the Park area which we all loved. This was such a cool area. It demonstrated all the simple machines of themselves: pulleys, levers, inclined planes, etc. etc. and also demonstrated but they could be combined showed how they could be put together to make much more complicated mechanisms.
It also had some crowd pleasers like the nail bed, swings of different heights, etc.
Next up, the Garden Walk and the Insect Zoo. Aka Jill’s and Clara’s favorite sections. (Obvi I loved the plants, and Clara loved the creatures…..). There were some really cool plants.
The insect zoo was very interesting. There were some very unusual specimens. The leaf-cutter ants were really cool.
Next we went to the Engineering Design Workshop which was the kids absolute favorite section. We probably spent at least an hour here.
It was basically all about computer programming, all done with a really awesome visual interface and really tangible/ interactive controls.
I was impressed by how quickly the kids caught on to how it worked.
You have an assembly line of gems that go across the screen in front of you and you have to selectively pull gems off the assembly line…. 
….using these controls 
It was so simple but so fun. 
We all had a great time doing itl 
Another programming game: You have to give a robot a series of commands so that it will collect as many gems as possible. 
And the sequencing was very important. 
Everyone enjoyed this one too. 
We finally managed to tear ourselves away from this section and we moved on to the Arctic Adventure. Which was all about the….artic…. I was especially interested to learn about the sample drilling that is being done and how much they can learn from taking these samples. Super interesting.
Next we went down to the Space section which had a little space module that the kids crawled around in.
We were, unfortunately, unable to spend much time in this area because the museum was going to be closing pretty soon. Good thing we get to come back as much as we want!! So we made our way to the gift shop (I am pleased to report that a patch was $5 not $20, thank you very much.) And then we headed out.
The kids first stopped and had the automatic hand stamper stamp each of their hands about 20 times apiece.
Honestly, I can’t say that I blame them. It was a pretty cool gadget.
And this was a pretty dang cool museum.
