California Science Center!

Erin & I took Emma & Sophia out to the California Science Center yesterday. We had such a good time! This museum is awesome and had so many things for the little ladies to do. The best part is that it was all free! They have some paid entry areas, but we figured the girls didn't really need to see genuine mummies from around the world, so we skipped that section. :)

We headed out there mainly because of a temporary exhibit that was closing soon and I wanted to take Emma before it was gone. This was the "Exploring Trees, Inside and Out" section and that was pretty cool. But we were pleasantly surprised by how much more we found there to explore... Before we even entered the museum, the girls got a mini-lesson in leverage (and sound waves). Emma was able to help me lift a real truck off the ground by using a pulley system. She thought that was way cool. Sophia did NOT want to help. She stood still and held her hands over her ears till the loud groaning noises stopped instead! Then we stopped for a little bit of dancing and hugging in the courtyard before venturing in...

We headed straight to the Ecosystems area in search of the trees. To get there we had to make our way through a large hall where the walls were entirely covered in screens that were being projected with nature clips. There were butterflies emerging from cocoons, lava flowing down mountains, polar bears crossing the tundra, giant whales swimming across the room, etc etc etc. The girls (and their mommies :)) were entranced.

When we got to the Exploring Trees section the kids were able to sit in a giant bird's nest, climb up and through a hollow tree, listen to bird calls, draw pictures of trees, build birdhouses. There was even a station where they could lift a door to smell a type of tree, try & see if they could guess what it was based on scent (apples, cherry, cedar, cinnamon etc) alone and then lift a flap to see if they had guessed correctly. Emma even got to watch herself "fly" through the trees with the help of a blue screen and camera.

From there we visited the desert, saw tortoises and lizards, got splashed by a flash flood as it raced down the rocks, and learned about heat as Emma & Sophia watched themselves on a thermal image monitor. Next door to the desert was the arctic. Of course. Lol. That makes sense. They climbed on snowmobile and saw a real polar bear pelt.

We finished up the morning with a trip to the aquarium sections (more pictures to come) and some playtime in the Discovery House. There the girls got to cook in the kitchen, play in the loving room, and harvest fake veggies in the mulch box outside. They also got to water plants with real watering cans and take a peek inside various boxes to examine the root systems of different kinds of plants.