Jackson, James, and I went to the Arizona Science Center today for free, thanks to culture passes from the library. I wasn't so sure how engaged these two would be, as I typically think of the science center as being geared for older kids. I was totally wrong. The boys LOVED the science center! They were so into every single exhibit we stopped at-we could have stayed a lot longer, and we were gone for 4 hours as it was. We will definitely go back, hopefully for free again! I'll annotate the pics a bit....
Our first stop was the water structures just past the entrance. The boys probably could have spent most of their time out here, loading balls in the catapults, playing with the fountains, and tossing balls in the tornado-so much fun!
It took me a long time to get James to go into this one. It is a stomach that poops you out. :) Eventually though, James realized if you get to the top of the slide, it will start....uh....passing gas at you as it poops you down the slide. Okay, this is gross. But man, did the boys love it! We were one of the 10-15 people in there at the time, and the boys' laughter was filling up the entire room. We also tossed the balls in the big nose, only to have them sneezed out at us, we felt the boy's forehead to discern a fever, we built a body with all the major organs, and we walked the heart maze. Just fun!
This was the drum that simulated a heart beating. Just past this exhibit is a room with a huge manequin laying on a surgery table, and you watch a film that is projected straight onto the guy's chest, basically showing a heart surgery. We watched for quite a while, and I explained what I could to James-it was kind of neat for him to see the basics of a surgery that he has had done twice. We visited several other heart exhibits in this area too.
Watching the skeleton ride a bike.
Probably the highlight of the visit was the cow eye dissection. Super, super cool for James! I was proud of myself, I could answer most of the questions the guy asked about the eye, and remembered most of the vocabulary I learned way back in anatomy class-wooho! We got a close up picture afterwards-super cool!
Exploring the brain-a few pictures down, you can see James with an actual human brain. James had no idea where his brain was located. I asked him, "Where's your brain, James?" He said, "hmmmm....in my heart." I said, "no, not in your heart. Where's your brain?" He sighed, and said, "I don't know. I just don't have a brain." LOL!
Building and exploring in the next room-we connected the plumbing lines for a sink, balanced the balls in the air, and built a house using floor plans as a guide.
This was impressive to me, James actually managed to pull himself about 2/3s of the way up this thing! he was carrying a third of his weight. He tried so hard, it was amazing!
We sat down for a while to watch another kid ride the sky-bike across maybe 50 yards of the museum. It is balanced by a huge, 350 pound weight under the bike, so there is no way to fall off, but it is still fun to see!
This is my favorite level-Earth and Weather. We played around with this machine first, where you can destroy and create different types of rocks due to weather. Then we built a dam right in front of the huge mural of hoover dam.
And this.....oh, this. This is a fenced in, circular area that you stand in. There are four TV screens surrounding the area and it plays a 5 minute movie about weather and natural disasters. If you are standing in the middle, you will get a 4D experience. We were the only ones in it, and we felt the heat of a volcano, the wind and rain of a hurricane, the rumbling of an earthquake, and the lightning of a thunderstorm. The boys liked parts of it, and were flat out scared of other parts of it. James is incredibly interested in volcanoes right now, so that was his favorite part by far. After our first round in the actual arena, we went out and watched the move again from the safety of the perimeter....even then, they were still scared! But they liked it a lot, and James said he wanted to go back....next time.
Watching from safety. ;)
LOVE their faces, lol!
Making clouds as one of the last things we did before heading out.
And of course, one last stop to play in the water structures.
Love hanging out with these boys and love finding fun, creative things to do with them, especially those that involve us leaving the house!
