Lawrence Hall of Science

We went to the Lawrence Hall of Science today. The kids had seen a commercial on TV that they had a new engineering exhibit. It looked super fun and so I told them we could go.

Each time we visit a particular museum after it's been awhile it's great to see how they take the best parts of their gig and improve upon it. Some of our favorite exhibits from last time were re-arranged to a permanent configuration. They added a kindergarten and under area that the children were immediately drawn to.

The large blocks that they had in this area were intended for construction of various assigned projects, but as it turned out they were mostly used for jumping onto. Ethan was creative and he and another boy made a bridge, a house and a tower, but ultimately they were frustrated because Elle kept knocking everything down with speed and exuberance.

Hunter was invited to participate in a special language study for 3 and 4 year olds by a Berkley graduate student. He was part of the control group so he didn't get asked any funny questions, but he did get to talk to a bunch of puppets. As a thank-you he was given a special Lego block with Berkley's logo on it.

We had lunch outside on a bench and enjoyed the most BEAUTIFUL view. Rather than make the sandwiches beforehand I brought bread, peanutbutter and grape jelly and made them right there. It worked out better that way since everybody wanted two sandwiches rather than just the usual one.

Outside were several exhibits to show the children how water flows, earthquake fault lines, how wetlands were naturally replaced by settling sediment from flowing rivers. The children's favorite was the river where you could change the flow of the water.

The visiting engineering exhibit, which was advertised on television was better than I expected. There were several booths at the front of the room in which you were given an engineering problem, materials to solve it an a hint in the right direction.

I worked on the paper bridge where the span of the bridge was longer than the length of a peice of paper. The bridge also had to be strong enough to hold several wooden blocks. I first started by orienting overlapping paper in the most obvious flat way, but it had no strength to support the blocks. I turned my papers sideways and laid a platform across. Voila!! I was so pleased with myself.

Seriously...an entire exhibit dedicated to engineering. It was like CANDY!

Elle, who has been doing very good potty-training with no accidents the past few days got so absorbed in a project that she peed her pants right in the middle of what she was doing. Yup, she's my girl!!! (The engineering interest, not the pants peeing) Fortunately, I brought an extra diaper.

Ethan's favorite project was the airplanes. You were given the task of flying a paper airplane though a triangle placed about 20 feet in the air. There were step-by step instructions how to build different models. Once you had your plane built there was a testing site where the nose of the plane was clipped in place and then a button activated the wind tunnel. You could see if your design flew well or needed modifications. Ethan got it through the triangle on the second try.