Going Batty at the Science Museum




All summer long I had been promising Sam I’d take him to see the cool Shark Exhibit at the Science Museum. He was all fired up to see it, but don’t you know it, we never quite made it there. Oh, well. That’s the way the shark tooth crumbles. He is welcome to tell his therapist all about it when he is 25. In my defense he is hardly the poster child for deprivation. He did go to umpty-nine camps, hideously expensive swimming lessons, Cape Cod, Dallas, Busch Gardens, the Children’s Museum, and various and sundry other cool places. So there you go, therapist of the future! Take that!

Anyway I saw an ad the other day for the new Bat Exhibit at the Science Museum, inviting us to “Come Hang With Us.” And so we did– hang with the bats, so to speak. Lo and behold we were buckled up within 24 hours with a pit stop to spin class at ACAC to fight an hour-long battle in the War on Mommy-Fat. (I’m sure you’ll agree it’s just another form of Terror.) When we got there, I was elated to see that the highly-anticipated-yet-undelivered Shark Exhibit was still on! Bonus! Maybe the therapist won’t get on my case for Shark-Gate after all!

Well, we saw the bats first. Once Sam got over the fact that a bat was not going to swoop out and land on his shoulder, we both learned some pretty cool stuff. First of all, there are 585 different kind of bats. (And the internet said there are 1,100.) Anyway there a a lot! Who knew? Another bit of batty trivia — Did you know that bats are mammals? And here I was thinking they are birds! They also have one baby at a time, usually once a year, and actually nurse their young, each with its own unique cry just like human babies. AND bats are not blind; they actually can see in the dark! OK, enough with the bat facts!

Then it was shark time, da-na, da-na, da-na-na-na-na-na (In case you were wondering, I was attempting to conjure up the “Jaws” theme song in your mind.) It was pretty cool I must admit, especially the huge sand structures. We saw different kinds of small sharks, including a hammerhead, one especially creepy shark. i also learned that sand dollars are alive, not just sand pounded together by waves. Also, star fish are not in fact fish at all. The proper name is now “sea stars.” OK, I stand corrected. Sea stars it is.

We headed outdoors to see the old trains out back and headed off to “Science Unplugged” where kiddos can build various different structures with blocks and learn some basic principles of engineering and physics. We even built a Roman Arch that we could walk on — with lots of coaching from the gracious volunteer.

After a snack for Sam and a massive caffeine-infusion via coffee for Mommy in the cafe upstairs, we were headed to the gift shop, arguably the most important stop of the trip. We hit the jackpot there last time we were at the museum with a kid’s coal miner’s helmet made by Squire Boone Village — complete with a real light on the front. Here is the link to that awesome find: http://libbywithay.blogspot.com/2009/02/science-museum.html. So it was going to be hard to top that one for sure.

I realized that this would be the prefect time to implement the “We-Don’t-Get-To-Buy-Something-Everywhere-We-Go Rule, just most of the time. I was all set to make this a “teachable moment” a la Henry Louis Gates when our eyes fell on a model solar system kit which was pretty cool even for me, the non-astronomer-Mommy-type. It was very cool, so cool that the WDGTBSEWG Rule went out the window — and into space. Little did I know that 45 minutes later I would be in a full sweat trying to get the $12 kit to jive. Once Daddy Mac got home, he was able to put the universe together a whole lot better than me. Oh, I forgot — Sam did it ALL himself because he is just that gifted. We learned all sorts of factoids, and Sam seemed to have all of the planets memorized in their various locations. I was impressed, but my proud moment morphed into cackles when he later showed the model to the babysitter, explaining, “Here’s Saturn. Here’s Venus. Here’s New York City. And there’s Mercury!”

There is still more to learn at the Science Museum, so we’ll be back!

LibbY

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