Free Wednesday!

The first Wednesday of every month, a few museums in the area have free admission!!! My neighbor, Monica, and I have taken advantage of this deal as often possible since we found out.  We’ve been to the Exploratorium once and the Bay Area Discovery Museum twice now. Kim and Maggie have a lot of fun. I can only find pictures of the Discovery Museum … I think we took Monica’s camera to the Exploratorium. So come explore with us!

Two cute friends found some wonderful xylophones to play on.  Maggie found some bamboo, she liked the different segments. And that bottom right picture is of one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. There are steel rods of varying heights jammed into a tire with a bar around the top to keep them in place.  Then there are different sized washers around each rod.  You pull the washers up the rods, as they fall back down they catch on the ridges of the rods and make a fantastic tinkling sound. Each rod has a different note, because of their different heights. I love it. I’ve always wanted to learn how to weld so that I can make things like that.These frogs were fun for the girls. Kim (neighbor), Katelyn (Maggie’s second cousin), and Maggie stepped on the black plungers, which would then pump air out the mouths of the frogs in the tubes, making super fun bubbles!There are just a ton of different activities for the kids. (clockwise from the top right) There are huge foam blocks for building, a pirate ship where you can dig for treasure in the sand, a gravel pit with hand operating cranes to move the gravel, and a rain stick attached to a lazy susan, which Maggie LOVED spinning.There’s a boat room where you learn about the effects of water currents and air flow on boats.  It’s meant for older kids, but she really enjoyed feeling the wind from the wind machine.  Not much interest in the flags, but maybe she will next time.Again, just the coolest stuff! A HUGE log, with room to climb through, the coolest little house/maze made of growing vines, a fun “spider web” to climb in, a canoe carved from a tree, some matching games where they just had fun sitting at a little table their size, these great “blocks” made from branches cut into small pieces, and the last ones are my favorite, and Maggie’s.  There is a toddler area, where you have to be under 42 inches to go in so there are no big kids running over the little ones. They have an area with different types of floor. In the bottom left and middle pictures you can see two of the textures.  The black is just a bunch of little rubber bumps, like those Adidas sandals that were cool when I was in high school, the blue in the background is some memory foam, and there was also some foamy scratchy stuff, a lot like a dish scrubber.In the toddler area, there’s a sweet little river that descends height so the older kids can play in a different spot from the younger, complete with fish and frogs to play with and water proof aprons to save their clothes!  As you can tell, there’s some fun splashing involved.We really love taking advantage of the free days at the museums in our area. You should find out if they do it in yours. And here’s to hoping orange juice will save Maggie from my strep throat.