Thursday, September 29, 2011

Lawrence Hall of Science

On our way to Lawrence Hall of Science Holly looks out the window and says look I see cranky
"the crane" character from Thomas, so cute.
Amazingly I was able to keep her away from the water while we waited for our friends to go inside
It was only about ten in the morning, but it was a very hot day
Here Holly is climbing on a strand of DNA :-)
This was our first time at the science center
This little gadget was cool, but not working when we first visited it
The big exhibit is dinosaurs
Can you believe this view? The science center is in the Berkeley Hills
Above the University and looks out across all of Berkeley, the bay and even the Golden Gate
Here is a little baby Dino puppet theatre
This is a room that is like a theatre, Holly really liked playing in here and watching the giant globe
Yeah, our friends arrived, Citlali and Joaquin
This is a "nest"
Holly pretends to be a baby dinosaur
Look at how cute they would have been, just like cuddly kitty cats
This was a neat area where you could look for dinosaur bones
The kids had a great time digging in the gravel
There were little brushes you could use just like an archaeologist
Holly was having a wonderful time
This was a insect ting where you could use these magnet handholds to pretend to climb a wall like a bug
There was a section on nutrition and health
Holly tried to climb up the wall
This was really neat, you could use these panels to build and then drop a ball
Holly didn't quite get how to make pathways but liked moving the panels around
out back was a giant dinosaur
This was one of Holly's favorite rooms
All things related to balls
Balls spinning in a spiral, and balls flying through the air
Here Holly is learning how to make a bridge
You put together the suspension wires
make a triangle and then you can add a road
She liked making the car go off the end of it
Isn't this amazing! I had to keep Holly far away. She really wanted to make it crash
It was built completely with tongue depressor like wooden pieces, no glue
Here we are learning about electricity
This was another of Holly's favorite area's. You could replace the size of the tires to see how the car drove
Some wheels were big, other small, some had Velcro to create resistance
Then there were different kinds of surfaces the car drove on too
ther was even one that was powered
But she liked the one you push better.
What she really wanted to do though was climb on the track to push the car
Even Santiago had a fun time crawling around
The next room was the Dinosaur exhibit
They moved around, the roared
There were big ones and little ones
Holly loved it
We went around and around the area several times
I don't remember any of the names now
But at the time we did and Holly learned them all
For a few minutes at least
Then we went back outside
There was some water and I let Holly play in it
It was so very hot and we needed to cool off
Back inside we ade the rounds again
This time Holly showed the nest to Citlali and they played inside together
Holly wanted her Blankie because she was a baby Dinosaur
Then we went and had some lunch
We had some juice
The kids shared some fruit and goldfish
After Lunch Citlali went home for a nap, but Holly wasn't ready to go yet
So we decided to explore around the downstairs
We found a real Dinosaur bone and there was a table with some puzzles
There were microscopes and Holly looked inside
Here is a whole Skelatan
There was an animal room too where we got to meet a bird
Then we ran into our Friend Ahayiah a little girl who is in Holly's class at preschool
Holly was thrilled to see her, as it was summer time and Ahayiah was going to Kindergarten
So they weren't in class together anymore and Holly was missing her
We ended up going around the entire Museum with Ahayiah another time
Holly had so much fun showing her everything
On our way out we stopped by this machine again and this time it was working
Air blew out and the ball would actually float in the sky
We had a wonderful time at Lawrence Hall of Science. Here is a Cyclotron one from like 80 years ago. It was pretty cool.