We have a small museum in Sacramento that I took the boys to a few days ago, called the Discovery Museum Science and Space Center.
The docent gave the boys a worksheet with 20 questions on it relating to the exhibits. After filling it out, they received a polished rock of their choice.
As I mentioned before, it is a small museum, but full of information. We had to take a break part way through to stretch our legs outside.
The first room we went to had a variety of frogs, insects, turtles, some rabbits, lizards, a screech owl, and a porcupine…
Counting all the walking sticks…
Testing their sense of smell. They had to guess scents that come from nature…cedar, pine, vanilla, cinnamon, etc…
I am always in awe over how small a hummingbirds nest is. Half a golf ball, maybe?
Trying on some wooden shoes…
The rest of the exhibits were in one long room with a little side room that was open and attached. The focus was on dinosaurs, rocks, fossils, and crystals.
This picture is actually my favorite for this reason…at home, I have been teaching the boys about rocks. I learned the the museum had a new exhibit on rocks and that’s why I decided to take them. I did not tell them that rocks would be there and wanted to see if they would make the connection or not.
We were all doing an art activity on dinosaurs, when ‘A’ decided to venture into the side room. I sat back and did not say anything, just observed. ‘A’ started looking at the rocks, then looked at the sign above. He looked back down at the rocks, then made this huge intake of breath…’OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Mom! IGNEOUS ROCKS! They have igneous rocks, mom! MOM! THEY HAVE OBSIDIAN! ‘R’ has always wanted to touch obsidian! Come here, RyRy!!” (I hope I was able to adequately display his level of excitement and enthusiasm…)
‘R’, hugging the sulfur/sulphur rock…
Looking at salt, sugar, sand, rocks, their hands, under a microscope…
Posing next to the metamorphic rocks. The boys had to take each rock and match them to the picture.
Taking a break outside …
This was a fun exhibit. They had a space set aside that talked about two people, a man and a woman. The man was Roy Chapman Andrews. He was the real life inspiration for the character, “Indiana Jones”, even down to his fear of snakes. He also served as a spy during WW1. Here the boys are hamming it up with costumes they had set up…
The woman was Mary Anning, known as the “Princess of Paleontology’. She and her family hunted fossils near their home. She discovered a famous fossil when she was twelve year old and spent the rest of her life as a paleontologist.
This was on crystals. There was a glass case behind ‘R’ that was full of uncut stones and then what they looked like as a gem or piece of jewelry. It was beautiful.
