Museum of Science and Industry

On June 1st, the kids and I went downtown by ourselves to visit the Museum of Science and Industry.  It's always been one of my favorite downtown Chicago museums, even since I was a little girl. It was the first time I took the kids by myself, and I was a little nervous how it was going to go. They've been much better about not dashing off away from me, so I thought it would be a good test whether or not we'd have a good time together, or if I'd feel too stressed.

I'm happy to say we had a wonderful time together. It's fine going with other families or other people in your own family to museums, but we felt so free to take our time seeing the things we really wanted to see and spending as much time as we wanted to at each exhibit.

One of my favorite exhibits was Science Storms. The had so many awesome hands-on simulations, including a storm chaser that kept us there for at least a half hour. It was like sitting in the passenger seat of a truck that chases tornadoes. Then it shows you getting out the truck, going around the back, and helping set up the equipment that would measure things like wind speed and air pressure.

The kids' favorite room was the Idea Factory, which is really a children's museum inside the museum.

Alexa was fascinated with this set of angled mirrors you can open and close. She'd run back and forth and put different things in front of the mirrors, and then open and close the mirror to see how often the objects doubled or tripled.

Jared stuck with what he loves to do best: throwing things. He spent almost the whole half hour (before they booted us out to make room for the next group) just picking up balls from the water and throwing them over the ledge at the top.

We worked also together at trying to balance the scale.

Then we headed to the miniature train exhibit. It's a huge exhibit; trains run through models of downtown Chicago, through tunnels and the countryside.

Next to the trains, you can sit in an old trolley car. The kids started holding hands, and Alexa told Jared they were on their first date. (Alexa's fascinated with the concept of "dates" now). I was lucky to take this picture of them hugging each other. So much better than fighting!

 After the trains we went to see the baby chicks. We've been visiting this exhibit ever since the kids were a year and a half. It made me tear up remembering how when we first brought the kids, we had to lift them up to see inside the glass since they were too short to look inside on their own.

I don't have a picture of it, but I can't end without recommending that you visit the Coal Mine exhibit if you ever go to the Museum of Science and Industry. We had to wait 45 minutes in line, but it was worth it. You go down with a group of about 15 other people in an elevator, and they turn off the lights to simulate what the miners must have felt like. You also ride in coal carts and stand in rooms similar to what the miners experience. It's an extremely sobering experience.

Volcanoes, the Human Body & Dinosaurs

We've been reading the Magic Treehouse books together during lunch for the past six months or so. We had just finished reading Vacation Under the Volcano  Book #13 and wanted to make our own volcano, so I ordered the Magic School Bus Volcano kit.

As usual, Alexa wanted to read us the instructions and Jared wanted to do all the hands-on stuff. He looked so adorable in his scientist googles!

The kit has you experiment with different amounts baking soda, and vinegar and dish soap and you recorded your findings on a chart. We kept experimenting until we found our perfect combination. We had so much fun setting the solution off in the tube that we still haven't set it off the actual volcano yet!

We've had so much science taking place around the house lately. Alexa received a human body model from us for her birthday. She had been asking a TON of questions about body parts, what does what, and so I thought she'd love a model to play with. I was definitly right!

We bought the Smart Lab You Explore It Human Body model for her. It's very reasonably priced, and she has used it so much. In fact, just the past three days in a row she's sat down with it for at least an hour.

For her birthday, she also received two dinosaur excavation kits. She's been saying she wants to be an archeologist when she's older and loves the dino excavation exhibits at the science and children's musuems. This present did lose it's luster, though, after a few days. It was hard work chipping away at that plaster, and I evenually did a lot of the work for her at her request, but she did get excited when we'd see a fossil poking out. I think it made her appreciate how hard archeologists work and that it takes days or even months of boring manual labor before you find anything exciting.

Ocean Activities

We're going to the California and staying near the ocean in a few weeks (when this is published we'll already be there!), so I checked out Awesome Ocean Science (Kids Can! series) for some ocean related activities the kids might find fun to do.

Although the book is written for kids a bit older than mine, we still found many activities simple enough to do and understand. One of our favorites was the condensation/evaporation experiment.  We put warm water in the bottom of a plastic jar and set a baggie of ice inside the rim of the jar, holding it in place with a rubber band. Then after a few minutes it was exciting to see our ice baggie start to "rain."

The kids work well together because Alexa loves to be the reader and basically tell us what to do!  Jared is definitely a hands-on person and prefers to be the one in charge of doing the experiment or activity.

They had some really cool experiments showing what happens when the fresh water of rivers flow into the salt water of the ocean. Afterwards, Jared had the most fun just playing with the food coloring, water and medicine dropper.

Alexa's favorite experiment was testing which materials absorbed and which didn't absorb water. We gathered stuff from all over the house:  gym shoes, wood, leather shoes, paper, sponges and lots of other things, too. Then we squeezed droplets of water of the material and watched what happened....

...and then finished off the rest of the water.

Another fun experiment was testing water pressure. You stick your hand in a bread bag and then plunge it into a container of water. The kids thought it was so cool that their hands would get squeezed by the water. It really made them understand what would happen to you twenty feet under the water if you weren't wearing special equipment.

Winter Games & Activities

This past winter has definitely been the winter of games. The kids are big into games now. Oh, we've played Candy Land, Memory and similar games before, but now it's the kids really asking on their own. Scooby Doo is very, very big in our house. Not a day goes by that we don't watch, read about or play with Scooby and the gang. This haunted mansion Scooby Doo game was a HUGE hit around here. The gang has to make it to the top of the mansion, but there are traps along the way.

On Christmas Eve the kids received a Smashed Potato Head Playdough game. I have to admit that I find it pretty fun, too. You have to make it around the board without getting either cut in half, turned into fries, rolled into a hamburger or chopped in two.

Besides Legos (which deserve a post of their own), Jared loves his Trio set next, especially one that also turns into a Batcave. He and Steve have spent hours playing with this set. He's hoping to get a Joker set for his birthday in a few weeks.

We've also really enjoyed Don't Wake the Daddy.

Of course, it's always fun to play good ole blocks with Daddy.

Alexa seems to go back and forth with wanting to play with her GeoSafari laptop. She really likes it when others play with her.

What she ALWAYS wants to do is look at globes. She loves to search for different countries on the computer, read about them, and then find them on the globe. I guess my love of all things travel is rubbing off on her!

I love the show Art Wolf's Travels to the Edge. It combines two passions of mine- travel and photography. Alexa really enjoys cameras, too. So, she and I really got into watching this show together this winter. One day she asked to take pictures of the screen to kind of emulate Art as he was taking pictures on screen. Here's one of her shots.

The kids have also spent quite some time with Alexa's GeoSafari Talking Microscope. It's a pretty cool toy for kids who like looking a small insects and spiders and taking quizzes on them.

What indoor winter activities have been big around your house this year?

Random Summer Fun

Here are a few random moments from the past few weeks.

Jared's been very into putting together different "mummy ghost" costumes. I think he's perfected it with this one. The pirate hat and his sister's white tights do the trick.

An impromptu science experiment. One day the food coloring was out, and Jared poured it in some water. I took out the vegetable oil to see how the coloring would dissolve in that liquid.

A fun game of Scooby-Doo Memory and Popsicles.

A request for hard-boiled eggs for lunch.

I walked in the living room one day to see Alexa stamping Jared all over. Yeah - he had taken off all his clothes, so it literally was all over.

Hula-hooping....

...and bouncing basketballs with Daddy.

Lots of bike riding.

Giving his dinosaurs a bath.

Helping me stir seasonings for the pot roast.

And snake love.

ScienceArts

One of favorite resources in the past week as been the book ScienceArts by Mary Ann Khol. Both kids enjoy doing art and have from an early age. They both do something with art every day, usually painting or drawing, and they've also enjoyed the few science experiments we've done in the past.

So, when I ran across ScienceArts on Amazon I knew it would be something they'd love, and I was right. We've been doing quite a few experiments in the past week with liquid and powder tempera paint.

The first experiment involved wetting a piece of construction paper in water and placing it on a cookie sheet. Then, using watered down liquid paint, you suck up the paint with an eyedropper and drop it onto the wet paper. The paint quickly diffuses across the page.

The second experiment is similar except you use powdered paint and sprinkle it on the paper. We watched how the powder became absorbed into the wetness of the paper. Of course, the kids couldn't resist just smearing the paint around with their fingers. It was cool to experience the powder becoming liquid underneath your hands.

Of course, I had to create my own picture, too (it's the one at the bottom of the post). I always have a weakness for wanting to follow the directions exactly and not deviating in any way (I'm sure a side-effect of my institutional schooling), but I'm gradually learning to follow my children's example. I believe there can be benefits to copying and modeling something, but kids are not given near as much time to play with objects, resources and supplies on their own. An art, science, writing or any other type of project is usually presented as, "Watch how I do things, and then copy me."

Gradually, I'm learning to trust myself and to sometimes just jump right in. There will be time to learn from those more experienced than me along the way, but if I can't have that initial thrill of exploring something new on my own terms, I might never get to the point where I'm interested enough to benefit from listening to or observing how others have done it in the past.

June 24th -29th

     Since cleaning up our flooded basement on Thursday after we came back from our mini vacation in Minnesota, I've not been feeling very good. I had sinus surgery about a year and a half ago, and yet I still get sinus infections and blockage. So, I haven't had my camera out that much or been very interested in writing. Still I wanted to capture some memories from this week, so here goes...

~ making fudge with Steve and Jared late one night after Alexa had gone to sleep. We used the quickie recipe off the back of a Marshmallow Fluff container. Yum!

~ going to see Shrek Forever with Steve and the kids at the cheapie show

~ going on a Home Depot run after the movie to pick up custom made storm windows for the upstairs rooms. They were already two weeks late, we had ordered them over a month ago, and found out that they had reversed the dimensions on the windows so we still had nothing to take home. Needless to say, we cancelled the order, got our money back and will be going elsewhere.

~ having Jared call me out to look at his sidewalk drawings. He made one of me, Steve, Shrek, and Rumpelstiltskin. He has really taken off with his drawings, usually wanting to draw every day, whereas before it had been months since he'd picked up a pen or crayon. He now includes lots of details in his drawing like eyebrows, bottons on clothes, and eyeballs inside of eye sockets.

~ lots of reading

~ going to church. Afterwards, I took the kids to a local indoor fruit market while Steve stayed to play electric guitar for second service. It was one of the worst times with the kids. Even though I hate to put the kids in the cart (they are four, for goodness sake!), it does help to keep Jared from dashing away from me. Jared did everything from fling fruit on the floor, knock over pails of juice, to run all around the store with me chasing him before I finally gave up. Then when I finally was able to scoop him up when he ran close to me, he yelled, kicked and screamed for awhile. UUUUUUGGGGHHHH. I love him so much, but he is a very intense, little boy, from having huge temper tantrums, to sitting up in bed at 9:30 and talking your ear off for an hour.

~ catching fireflies and swinging in the dark

~ watching Bedtime Stories together on movie night.

~ having Grandma watch the kids for three hours while I saw the sinus doctor and had another CAT scan done. Turns out the two upper sinuses have severe blockage and the lining has thickened. Now I'm on a steroid treatment and taking antibiotics. Monday evening I crashed at 7:00 and didn't wake until 8:00 the next day.

Yesterday, I still felt horrible, so I lazed around the couch most of the morning. Still, as I look back over the day, I'm amazed at what we still accomplished.

~ had a Joker's Birthday Party. Jared made up this game a few weeks ago. We sit around in a circle and have a birthday party for the Joker (who is really a pirate figure). Everyone brings him gifts to open up, ranging from diamonds, to poison, to knockout gas. Then sometimes we dance and then sing Happy Birthday. Then the Joker blows out his birthday candles.

~ did many mazes with the kids from a Maze book, and Alexa practiced writing her letters in a Big Kindergarten workbook I bought her a few weeks ago.

~ lots of jumping on the bed

~ watched several episodes from both Liberty's Kids series and the original Inspector Gadget series.

~ I squeezed in a shower

~ during lunch I read to the kids several Step into Reading Spiderman books, and a Graphic picture book about Patrick Henry.

~ my mom came over for a few hours to watch the kids so I could get some rest. But right before she came over, I found the kids in my room naked, rubbing my Vaseline all over themselves and the wall. They had been quiet for a few minutes, but it was so nice to eat my pizza lunch in peace, that I didn't go in there right away. That cost me twenty minutes of my resting time. What time I did have to rest after getting a bill ready to mail, washing the dishes and cancelling an appointment, my mom took the kids for a little walk, they washed the car with the hose, and read together.

~ In the afternoon, we did a project out of Mary Ann Khol's awesome book ScienceArts called Wet Paint Design. The kids dipped construction paper in water, then dropped diluted paint from a medicine dropper onto the construction paper to make designs.

Jared called his picture Volcano and Alexa labeled hers Ogre. We talked a little about the process of diffusion, too.

It still amazes me how even with such little planning on my part, and even when I feel bad, if we discuss the things going on in our lives and take advantage of everyday opportunities, the kids learn and pick up so much. Just in this week were were able to discuss everything from the American Revolution, sinuses, getting a refund, why it's not safe to run off in a store, how to make fudge, and diffusion.