A Trip To The Museum

I never mentioned that we sold our house last week! At least, it's under contract. The buyers had their home inspection today of our home, which meant we (the kids and I) had to get out of the house. Since the inspection began at 9:00, I chose the DuPage Children's Museum as our destination because the kids love it, we have a membership that we paid for so we might as well use it, and it opens at 9:00.

We arrived and Ian and Zoe immediately headed for the mirrored rooms while Emma ran off to the wall of straws that you push your hand into and it leaves the impression of your hand. After moving on they all discovered the room with the multicolored lights and twirling disco ball. After running into the room, they quickly realized that by standing on a certain line in the room, they could make music play. This caused a flurry of jumping and dancing on and off the line to make the music play.

What I love about the Children's Museum is that it is always changing. The same beloved exhibits are always there, but they often add new twists to the exhibits, or new exhibits entirely. Today we found a color wall that allowed you to change the colors and patterns on the wall by turning various knobs. Ian managed to make stripes, then spots, then an all white screen. Really neat!

There is a shadow room that captures your shadow for about 30 seconds for you to look at that we had a lot of fun in by raising our arms or our legs before the flash went off. At one point all four of us had our arms and legs spread, and after the flash exploded, I had a really amazing feeling about how neat it was to be experiencing this with my kids, all together.

On the second floor of the museum is an everchanging special exhibit. At one time it was model trains, which I took Ian to during the height of his train mania and we spent at least an hour up there watching the trains. Today it was an exhibit about Japan and Japanese animation. There was a whole part about Hayao Miyazaki and his films. The girls took off their shoes and pretended to have tea in a Japanese room while Ian and I found a stop action animation area where we made our own short movies. We both agreed on our way home that making our own little movies wasa our favorite part of the museum.

I think my favorite experience of the day, though, was with Zoe. She LOVES puzzles right now and I found a table that had some rubber puzzles on top. I sat down with her to help her with the puzzles and as she brought up a piece of the puzzle for some help, I would say, "Hmmmmm, where does this go?" A few pieces later and Zoe was saying, "Hmmmmmm" every time she looked for where the piece of the puzzle went. I hadn't even realized I was doing it until I heard Zoe do it. I tried to find as many puzzles on that table to do with her just so I could hear her say, "Hmmmmmmm" over and over again.

It was a great morning out, now hopefully the inspection news will also be good.