Whitaker Center

Hurricanes, movie production, airplanes, and more all in one afternoon! Only at a science museum.

Our little family has a big thing for science museums, and we have visited a number of them over the past few years. We are fortunate enough to have a decent-sized one close to home, and we took a field trip there last week.

There are actually about four of them within 30 minutes of our house, of varying sizes, themes, and budgets. One has a planetarium, another focuses on engineering, and another is three floors. We chose to go to the Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts because we have an annual pass for entry.

The first floor has some small exhibits with bubbles, sound, and the like, but its main feature is the large area for small children. They can act, build, shop, dress up, and play with water. We have spent many hours in this one area of the museum, but this time we opted to skip it.

The second floor has the Carnival of Health. It's exactly what it sounds like: carnival themed activities to teach kids about their bodies. You can feed Gorgo the correct amount of colored basketballs to represent the food groups, race on bikes to see who can burn calories faster, see what you might look like at age 70, and play whack-a-germ, just to name a few. The kids love this section of the museum, although the smaller two are a little afraid of some of the exhibits. It can get pretty noisy in there, and the germ game sneezes very loudly on the loser. It can be a little disconcerting the first time!

Seriously, how gross is that clown?

Also on this floor is a section called Move It! Kids can build and race cars, build and fly paper airplanes, use a variety of methods, including vacuuming, to move small particles throughout a large machine, build a bridge and test it, and find their home or famous landmarks and locations using Google earth. We found our old house, complete with our van in the driveway! It was a little creepy, to be honest.

The final floor has a  number of displays about our planet, including weather forces. Activities include making tornadoes, earthquakes, and floods, as well as trying to catch a cloud. Our favorite exhibit here is the hurricane chamber. 

Do you see me clutching him for dear life? Like those 65 pounds are going to save me in hurricane winds. He is, however, doing his best Harry Potter/Daniel Radcliffe.

In the rear of this floor is a behind the scenes look at movie production. We got stuck here for a really long time. Visitors can change the lighting, create some digital graffiti, experiment with music, and, our favorite, stop-motion animation. Oh, my, was this fun! I never dreamed I would have as much fun as the kids! We created a ton of movies and emailed them home to view later. 

 

This was my first attempt at the animation. Don't blink, or you might miss it! Next up is Little Bear's. Please don't ask me what it's about. I'm sure it has no point. When you get to trash can, I'm sure you'll agree!

And below is one of Curly's.

The best part of our visit was that it was a Friday afternoon in early October - too early for school field trips. We were five out of maybe 20 people in the entire museum! We practically had our own tour guide! An amazing museum employee named Jim enhanced our visit by showing us the ropes and explaining some of the concepts to us. We owe a lot of our fun to him!

This was our first field trip of the year, and we all loved it. I can't wait to take more!

Where do you like to go for field trips or family days?

Letterboxing

Our family started a new hobby this weekend.  Letterboxing!

Putting the stamp in our journal.

We've heard about it from some friends recently and thought that with our increased focus on hiking and family time, this seemed like a perfect fit.

Here's how it works.

You need: notebook, stamp to represent your family or group, ink pad, and clues.

You can go one of several letterboxing websites (try this one or this one) and find boxes in your area. Or if you are traveling, you can plug in that location and find some there.

We picked four semi-local sites to start. Two were right in our town. The first one was the library, which we needed to visit anyway, so we searched there. However, due to some construction in the past few years, this box was missing. We were a little disappointed since it was our first try, but we knew this was a possibility. The next box was listed as being five blocks from the library, so we headed on down the street.

We had success at the next stop, and although the chocolate shop was closed so we couldn't buy any candy, we loved the chocolate stamp!

Our family stamp: an oak leaf. We put our stamp into the notebook at the location.

The box with supplies: ink pad, stamp, and notebook.

It was hidden under a bush in a camouflage sack.

We needed to drive to another town for the next one. The clues on this one were much more vague. We actually had to Google pieces of the clue to find the general location. Maybe we would have known it if we lived in the town, but it was a neighborhood with a pond. The name of the neighborhood was hidden in the clue, and we had never heard of it. Once we found the neighborhood, the clues guided us right to our destination.

Can you see it hiding under there?

Our Beatrix Potter lover loved this one - it was Miss Moppet.

Everyone needs a little sass on an adventure.

And our third site was a short drive from there.

Jemima and The Gentleman for our BP lover.

Hand carved stamp.

Certainly, we liked the adventure. Having clues and an unknown destination is very appealing to us. I felt like we were on The Amazing Race, and the kids pretended to be a variety of explorers. But what sealed the deal for me was when I realized we were finding out about new places in our area that we wouldn't otherwise know.

Our third stop was in a nature preserve in a town where I've never spent any time. We had no idea it was there and would never have taken the time to look for it. It's fantastic getting to see new places in your local area. I think it would also be great to do on trips, to see some things off the beaten path, or if you find yourself moving to a new area. What better way to find out all your area has to offer?

Letterboxing was a huge hit in our family. It's definitely a keeper. We can make a whole day out of finding many, or we can just do one at a time.

What hobbies do you do as a family?

Tucquan Glen

Saturday was beautiful here - sunny and warm but not too warm. After a morning of chores and looking for a car to replace the one that died, we headed out for a hike. 

Little Bear loves to hike. He likes to lead us and look for the trail. He's happiest in the woods.

Papa Oak and I discovered this place last fall when we went for a hike for our anniversary. It's very pretty and very peaceful. I knew at once the kids would love it there, but we hadn't made it there with them. They love hiking, so they were thrilled to find somewhere new.

The path alternates between rocky and smooth, and it always follows the creek. At least it did as far as we went! It took us a long time to hike out because we stopped many times along the way...

To check out the many varieties of mushrooms growing...

To learn to skip rocks...

Curly and I each managed to skip our first rocks!

To build a dam...

Okay, so maybe we aren't beavers.

To play in the muddy sand...

To admire the beauty around us...

To hold up this tree...

Tiny Dancer can do it with just one finger while those boys had to work hard!

To follow the trail markings... 

To play a trick on Mama...

Have I mentioned he wants to be an actor?

Very convincing.

To climb on fallen trees...

And to take a few pictures.

It was truly a beautiful afternoon.