Museum Trips

I've been up at my mom's the last couple of days. It was just a quick trip but we managed to squeeze quite a bit into it.

Yesterday we went to the Fundy Geological Museum where I was surprised to discover that the rock and mineral samples, particularly amethyst, held as much wonder for Catherine as any of the fossils and casts of dinosaur bones. Harry was the one that run around the dinosaur exhibits while Catherine stood glued to the mineral exhibit trying to work out how to pronounce the names.

The trip to the gift store was interesting. Catherine piled up on all kinds of sciency goodies: Geodes, polished rocks, a rock that grows crystals after a week in vinegar, little plastic tubes that you compress and then release to shoot across a room and an old fashioned toy that I can't describe and will have to post a video of later.

Harry choose a plastic magic wand that made a whooshing sound and had a blinking LED light.

I tried to steer him away from the wand to something I considered more appropriately reflective of a museum gift shop but he was not persuaded and in the end, it was all he wanted. And he knew what he was doing of course. That wand hasn't gotten a rest since and has sparked some wonderful imaginative play.

We bundled up our loot and headed for the Age of Sail Heritage Museum which is only 5 minutes from my parent's house. It's a small community museum with exhibits that mostly come from the basements and attics of the local people. And it has everything. There was a dinghy, model ships, an old turn-of-the-century kitchen, models of the local wharf when it was a ship building center, documents, household goods, woodworking tools, a snowshoe for logging horses (!)...Catherine was most impressed with a blacksmithing forge and anvil on display. When I told her of another attraction a couple of hours away from our home that had a working blacksmith shop she got excited and decided that HAD to be our next trip. I think the blacksmith shop was something she was familiar with from fantasy books and that's why it was such a draw for her.

The only downside was that though the young guide at the museum was very polite, she wasn't all that knowledgeable. When Harry piped up with, "Excuse me but where did this boat come from?" (in reference to a wooden dinghy) all she could say was, "Um. Off a bigger boat." No matter, we had a good time there.