Eclectic Parent

We headed into New York to go the American Museum of Natural History. For the first few years of their lives it was known as the dinosaur museum and we never saw anything else. They’ve finally got to the point where we can see other areas of the museum. We brought our three and two of their 9 yo cousins. I don’t know if it’s because it was the weekend or because it was summer, but the museum had small hands-on science booths throughout the museum, which were a lot of fun.

We started in the planetarium area. The kids always enjoy the scales that tell you what you weigh on different planets or stars - ranging from a few pounds on some planets to trillions on neutron stars. There was a booth showing us how hard it is to look at things in a mirror image. Then we went over to where they had a heat sensors hooked to televisions. It’s lots of fun to rub yourself with ice and watch your orange/red skin turn blue or green. We watched a bit of the movie about collapsing stars and black holes.

After lunch we went to the whale room. It has an actual name but anyone who’s been to the museum knows the room with a full size blue whale hanging from the ceiling. They have interactive screens in front of the large wall of ocean animals. We looked at different animals names - the weird albino cockroach looking thing actually was called a sea roach for instance. The had more hands-on booths here where the kids build tinfoil boats and tried to see how many pennies they’d hold before they sunk and where they tested different objects buoyancy. I always love the fossil of the horseshoe crab in this room, especially when we’ve just held them in our hands the day before at the aquarium. It’s a lot easier to explain that they are truly an ancient animal when you can see the fossil and the creature a day apart. We talked about other animals that are old and they came up with alligators and sharks.

From the whale room we zoomed through the dinosaur halls. Formerly that was the only part of the museum that existed for them, now it really didn’t impress. Plus they were tired- too many days of staying up late - they usually go to bed about 8, but the sun is setting about 9:30 here and the house is full of other kids - and playing hard. So we quickly zoomed through the dinosaurs and headed back to grandpa’s.

And landed right in the middle of Uncle Tom’s birthday party. Rather than house full of children, it was a house full of adults. More swimming, launching rockets in the yard, and hitting golf balls off the cliff overlooking