"Children do not need to be made to learn about the world, or shown how. They want to, and they know how." -John Holt

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Boston Children's Museum

Someone has got to teach me a new way to do collages as the amount of pictures I post is getting ridiculous. But until then, here goes!

Climbing the walls...My least favorite, the water room. Somehow we ended up here first instead of at the end of the day.Caden of course, doused himself with that bucket of water directly over his open-holed crocs and pants. He didn't seemed bothered by it so you'd think I'd could chill but wet clothes send me into a tizzy. Stupidly I left our change of clothes in the car. You know, the one parked down a couple blocks, up 5 levels in the parking garage on a freezing cold Boston day. Oh well. He dried. I lived.These girls are always hamming it up. ;)Ah the light table. One of the few things that Rich never made me even though I asked several times. What's up with that?! (I still wouldn't mind one. Even a mini version!)I'm not sure if this is a normal reaction, but when our crowd turned the corner to find the giant-sized chess pieces, it was more like a war battle broke out. :SThey started barreling them down and smashing pieces into each other. And since I was on edge about the wet clothes, I had to put a stop to it. That's me, the fun sucker!
Gabe, Caden (and I) made boats using a ruler, hand drill, saw, and a hole punch. I was sweating afterwards. Both boys were itching to get their hands on those tools though due to their sharp nature, I was unable to take pictures at the same time.Simone was disappointed to find herself boat-less later on but I reminded her that she hogged the wheelchair while we were busy building. (Oh yeah.)
Since this was Caden's first time to the museum as a "big boy", he was VERY excited to see the car room. A dream come true! The car pulley was a fun touch and Caden didn't even bop Cavan on the head when his best friend kept taking the car off the platform. I was able to distract Gabriel with the manipulative's area as the chaos in the car room was building to uncomfortable levels. Once that kid gets too riled up, all hope is lost for keeping himself sane the rest of the day. And then MY sanity is compromised of which recovery is nil.All the kids loved the mini-town. Especially the grocery store. Lots of ringing up and shopping was done. I'm surprised Simone put on the clerk's costume.
Moving on, the ball room was a hit with Munchie too.

Scientist Bomey preferred the microscopes...And as usual, the big win was the giant suspended "self-regulating" climbing maze.Apparently none of my children have inherited my claustrophobic tendencies cause this thing would be a big no-no.And this is what a two and a half year old looks like after 5 hours in a 3-leveled museum:Time to go home!

2 comments:

Unschoolers Rock the Campground said...

Looks like fun. We haven't been there in a while...thanks for the reminder.
Did you see that I gave you a tree of happiness award last week?
Also, I don't know how to make a collage, but you can make a slide show at slide.com.
As always, your pictures were fun to see. Your kids are beautiful.

Keri said...

So cute. I havent been there is a few years. I wish there was a way of detecting when they'll have a SLOW day! I just hate it when its over-populated, I get cranky too fast. THat last photo is a riot.

"By nature people are learning animals. Birds fly; fish swim; humans think and learn. Therefore, we do not need to motivate children into learning by wheedling, bribing, or bullying. We do not need to keep picking away at their minds to make sure they are learning. What we need to do - and all we need to do - is to give children as much help and guidance as they need and ask for, listen respectfully when they feel like talking, and then get out of the way. We can trust them to do the rest."
John Holt
"In the end, the secret to learning is so simple: Think only about whatever you love. Follow it, do it, dream about it...and it will hit you: learning was there all the time, happening by itself." -Grace Llewellyn
"What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child."
George Bernard Shaw
Real, natural learning is in the living. It's in the observing, the questioning, the examining, the pondering, the analyzing, the watching, the reading, the DO-ing, the living, the breathing, the loving, the JOY. It's in the joy. ~Anne Ohman
"How could youth better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?" -Henry D. Thoreau