It is mom's last weekend here and she has been wanting to take Thomas to the museum all week. It didn't end up working out, so we decided to all go on Saturday instead - which meant I got to go (which made me super happy, I love museums!).
Of course, it also meant Henry go to go as well - he didn't seem as excited as everyone else.
One of the armless statues outside the museum. Thomas saw it and immediately said "Moose!", he's getting good at his animal identification!
I didn't get to see most of the museum, we beelined straight for the back where the kids section was. First thing we found was one of the super awesome and complicated ball moving machines. I'm honestly not sure if Thomas or I was more excited. I love watching these things!
This one had a spinning table you could roll things across and see how it affected their path. Thomas just liked playing with the balls. I was a little concerned with the flat discs - they had a tendency to fly off the center and I was so worried one was going to smash some little fingers. "/
I can't remember what these things are called, but Thomas was fascinated by the ball hovering in the air stream. I think it was at this point it occurred to me that most of these things were big kid concepts...
And then I found the younger kid part! Whew! Playing with boats in water is much more toddler friendly than flying disks and crashing balls. Thomas was side-eyeing another kid in this photo, I swear he was having fun otherwise!
Especially when he found the plane! This boy loves planes almost as much as choo-choos - he cranes his neck up to the sky every time he hears one fly overhead (which is often up here!)
He's well on his way to being a pilot, he is pulling back on the yoke to take off. That's like 5% of the way there, right??
Meanwhile, Henry was off playing with an abacus. "Don't mind me, just going to do some complex math with these beads...."
And then Thomas found the trains! He was super excited! I was pretty excited, but these trains were not so impressive. No matter how slowly and carefully you pushed them, they would just fly right off the track.
Which led to the Great Tunnel Derailment of 2014... Whoops! You can see the guilty party's hand in the upper right corner. ; )
Henry moved on from the abacus to hanging out with his Nonni. She looks pretty happy with that change. :)
Thomas and I had much more luck with the blocks and balls. I wanted to make a path from the very top down, but he was very insistent on being the one to drop the balls in - who am I to argue with the toddler in the toddler section??
The bubble section was a pretty big hit as well! Look at him holding up the big bubble rings like a champ. He even managed to get a few bubbles to break free - which is impressive considering he's not got a huge lung capacity.
This platform was the best! It had a moat of bubble juice that you would stand in the center and pulled a ring up to encircle the people on the platform. I honestly kinda sucked at getting it up very far, but Aunt Heather was awesome at it. Thomas thought it was super cool - he was all excited about blowing bubbles out the side...
Until he realized he could pop it! Then it was a bit of a struggle for Heather to get it up very high before he popped it - ha!
The last section was more of the big kid stuff, but he didn't seem to care. Sure this demonstration was trying to show how magma moved, but he just thought it looked neat.
This one we had trouble to make work - it's a pressure sensitive pad that you were supposed to jump in the air and it would record your jump, then play it back in slow motion. I think we only got it to work for Thomas once, but he thought it was pretty darn cool!
And last, but not least - a demonstration of how earthquakes can liquify geologic formations and cause very bad damage during earthquakes (like the 1964 one here!). It was basically a shake table that would "sink" two houses in tiny glass beads. He didn't seem to care about the science behind it, but he loved pushing the button that made it shake. Maybe a future geologist, but more likely an engineer... :)