McWane Science Center

(Meredith added the pictures. This is Shane writing about what happened)

I have more stories to tell about this place than I have time to write, even without having a job right now. Nathan was so excited he was almost trembling. Right as we walked in the door there was a big kinetic sculpture that was colored golf balls rolling through this long track. It would hit on wood blocks and make noise and bounce balls into baskets, generally a pretty cool thing to look at. Well, Nathan and two other little kids who were sitting there thought that the descending scale sound that it made when it hit these 4 wood blocks was hilarious. They stood there waiting for the balls to make it around and hit them again and then all three of them would shriek with laughter. And all of this was before we even bought our admission tickets. We could have stood there for 20 minutes and gotten back in the van and I think Nathan would have been happy.

But we did walk on in, and Nathan was excited, and I have to admit I was about as excited as he was. As he ran into the big first room he was saying. Look! Look! It's science! Not something that can teach about science, no he big things set up were science.

We looked at a bunch of "science" as you will see from the photos and their descriptions below, but what we don't have pictures of is the playground that is in this place. It is massive and perfect. Lots of things to do and touch and even a big submarine that Nathan got in and led the other kids on a mission. We had to drag him out to go see the rest of the museum.

As tends to happen these pictures are in the reverse order, so this was the last place we went. On the bottom floor they have a mini-aquarium. Noah was fascinated by the big moray eel (it is the big yellow green thing you see on the left).

Nathan is getting to be such a brave boy. I guess he is just growing up. Above you see him using his two fingers to touch a shark. Noah wanted to touch the animals too, and made me hold him up by the tank saying "touch it, touch it, touch it" but when a shark or a ray came by he would curl into me and not put his hand down. Then as soon as it was gone he would say "touch it, touch it" again. This went on for about 15 times before I just put him back down.

They have a zip line that is about half a story off the ground. There are pads all along the track, but the first step off the platform is pretty high. I never thought Nathan would get up there and do it, but there were a bunch of other kids in line and when I asked him if he wanted to he raced to join them. I was so proud of him that I was as excited as he was when he was finished.

I might throw back the fish, but I think I will keep the lure.

Sometimes my little boy amazes me. This was a big room of these different shaped blocks. Nathan built a ramp with a little curl at the end and kept making it higher and higher. It was such a hit that all of the other boys came over and started rolling their balls down it too.

Noah is on a archaeological dig using his brush to sweep away the dirt from the dinosaur bones.

There was a water play area inside of the playground (complete with cute little vests for them to wear so they didn't get wet)

By far my favorite room was the bubble room. The picture above with the kid who just wouldn't get out (even though his mom was right there) is of Noah and me inside of bubble. You can see where we are blowing on the wall and it is poking out a bit. Below you see Noah playing in the bubbles. That thing was really cool. It would pull up a wall of bubbles that you could blow on and play with. Very neat. I kept trying to get the kids away from it so that I could play with it, but they kept running up and messing up my bubbles.

This is a catenary arch. I just went on google to look up what this type of arch was called and then realized that I just needed to make the picture bigger so I could see it. The Yanceys put the arch together (the pieces are numbered) and then we took pictures under it. Nathan is "doing karate" because at school he saw Max and Gavin doing karate, so now for some reason weeks later he has started doing it in his pictures. You have to admit the poses are cute.