Friday, April 2, 2010

Field Trip Friday - Discovery Place



A couple of weeks ago, we went to Charlotte, NC and visited a couple of good children's museums. The second place we visited was Discovery Place, which is a great science museum. We have been there 3 times now, and each time, the exhibits have been completely different. They even redo the play area for young children. This time was definitely the coolest.




There is a great water play area:



A giant fan with pinwheels, and ribbons and pom poms to play with in the wind:


Crumpet's favorite parts of the museum this time were the many, many building areas. There were endless types of fun building materials. In one area, there are boxes and boxes of flat, rectangular pieces of wood, and people have built amazing structures with these. Here is Crumpet building a pirate ship:


Here's the ship he was trying to copy:


One of many fabulous creations:


We also played with sailboats. This was part of an area demonstrating different forms of motion. There is a fan that blows onto this table, and depending on how you turn the sails and the fan, the boats race pretty fast!


I love this picture of Crumpet and his Gee Gee. They were both concentrating so hard to build a bridge. The challenge was to build a bridge that could hold 300 grams of weight. Ours held 700 grams when we were done!


There was a giant lite brite board. This was my favorite!


We found a wall lined with kitchen utensils and pots and pans that made a great drum set!



Crumpet gave his Gee Gee a rain shaker and they played in a band together:


The traveling exhibit this time was based on the show CSI. It was definitely cool, but gross and so not meant for Crumpet. We tried to steer him away from that area, but didn't get him out in time. He saw a mannequin demonstrating what happens when maggots get into a dead body... We are still talking about this, and probably will be for years. Uggh. Oops!


Also, there is normally a rainforest area with animals, but that was closed for renovation. We did go to a short talk about birds, and the animal keeper brought one of the museum's parrots with her, which was fun.


We had a great day. If you ever get the chance, check this place out!

Oops, the first time I published this, I forgot to include the link to Live the Adventure. Head on over to check out more Field Trip Fun!








2 comments:

  1. Looks like a fun field trip. That area with the building stuff looks super cool!

    ReplyDelete
  2. That looks like a fun place! When are you all heading to Oahu? Stationed at Pearl Harbor, I presume? The NEX there is incredible. We don't have a commissary or BX or anything like that on Maui, so cost-of-living is pretty high. I've been over to Oahu maybe 6 times in the 3 years we have been here- gotta hit the NEX every time! Plus they opened a Target last fall, and Kohl's is opening soon.

    ReplyDelete