3-2-1 Blast-Off and Creature Feature Camps

Benjamin has been really looking forward to his camps at the California Science Center! This week's, 3-2-1 Blast-Off sounds really cool. Joshua has the Creature Feature program this week. Perhaps he will either learn how to catch lizards or teach him that trying to catch the ones in our backyard is almost futile. Monday morning (after the kids were done fighting over sidewalk chalk), we spent exploring the science museum. We saw the temporary Science in Toyland exhibit first, which was fun, but not all the displays worked well. The kids had trouble getting the car to go all the way around a track with a loop and the dominoes exhibit took lots of patience. The sailcar and the building exhibit were really fun! Then we spent a few minutes in the 'Identity, an exhibition of you' special exhibit and the Transportation section. They loved the moving the light around to power the solar car. Finally, we headed to the World of Life and the Discovery Room because I thought that the live animals would be fun to see. The kids also enjoyed making butterflies, but we will have to return to check out the non-computer activities in the tech room.

Then we went outside for lunch, and I dropped the kids off at camp. Laura was not happy again about not going to camp herself. I promised her camp after Grandma leaves (it starts on Aug 3 and Grandma is leaving on Aug 2). Benjamin said that his group visited the Air and Space exhibit, learned about galaxies and saw a movie about a sun exploding. Joshua saw a gecko and learned about habitats by visiting the World of Life exhibit.

Tuesday morning we saw a magic show, Illusions by Allen, at La Pintoresca branch library in Pasadena. The show was very impressive, and the library was packed with kids. After the show, we played outside in the best playground we seen so far with a web climbing area that Joshua and Benjamin liked (Laura was too small) and a water play area. I gave the kids lunch while sitting in the park so that Benjamin and Laura might be able to dry off a bit. Then it was time to drop the kids off at camp. They were all anxious to pickup Grandma at the airport after camp. During camp, Joshua identified creatures in a pond in the education building and decorated his camp t-shirt. Benjamin brought home projects about the moon phases, constellations and asteroids and comets. After camp we headed to the airport. The kids loved watching planes landing and taking off as we approached it, but seeing Grandma was the highlight of the day!

Joshua here--On the second day of camp, we painted fish habitats on the back of our t-shirts and then we looked at the pond to see how many mosquito fish, crayfish, red eared-slider turtles, and bullfrogs there were. There was only one red eared-slider turtle and one bullfrog, but we found a rare crayfish with spots.

My favorite thing was finding habitats (on Monday in the museum). We found chicks habitat on a farm. (Laura calls a habitat a 'tat'). And we found fish in a kelp forest habitat. And we saw a bug garden habitat.