Harn Museum Tot Time

The Harn Museum in Gainesville Florida regularly hosts something called Tot Time where young children come and enjoy tours of the art museum on particular subjects.  This was our first opportunity to go to a Tot Time since we've lived here and I only wished we had gone sooner.  I have a phobia of art so I guess I just avoided it.  The docents were wonderful and they asked the kids wonderful questions about the pieces that really helped them to think about the different pieces of work.

This week the subject was sculpture.  We learned that in the museum there were paintings, sculptures and art objects.  Sculptures are things that you can walk all the way around (at least that is how she described it to the kids, and that was good enough for me.)  I didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked because you can only get pictures in certain parts of the museum, but the works there were beautiful.  The display that I was particularly excited about was the artwork by the author and illustrator of Caps for Sale one of my favorite books growing up (and consequently now on of the boys favorite books as well).

Here is a picture of the docent having the children try to pose in the same position as the person in the sculpture.  She asked them questions about how we "know" it is a person since the body parts don't really look like a person.  As you can see they had fun, and Nathan being the perfectionist that he is had to come up with reasons that their pose wasn't quite right!

Here are the boys looking at a Terra Cotta pot piece in an open garden at the museum.  Pottery is also considered a piece of sculpture.  This pot is open at the bottom so that when it rains the water doesn't stay in it, but runs out of the bottom.  It was a very pretty garden.

Once the tour of the museum was over, we got to go downstairs and participate in an art project of our own.  The boys were given model magic clay and told that they could make their own sculptures.  At first they were thinking they might have to make pots... then they realized they could make anything they wanted to.  We had a little problem when Nathan mixed his three colors so much that it just looked like a purple blob, but one of the docents had mercy on him and let him have her ball that had been less smooshed.  

Gavin is very proud of his colorful ball.  He really liked Nathan's sculpture and in the end just had Nathan recreate one for him instead of making his own.  That made me sad, but maybe the next time we come back he will have more confidence in his own creative ability.

Here is Nathan's finished sculpture.  He wants to name it Clyterratops.  I didn't interpret it while he was making it, but it looks pretty cool to me.  We had a lot of fun and both kids said that they wanted to come back.  

I would highly suggest coming to visit Tot Time if you have kids of your own.  The official age is 2-5, and you have to e-mail register beforehand, but it was well worth it.  We had a ton of fun.  The other plus is that if there was any works of art that might have been questionable for young children at the museum we didn't see it.  Our docent was great and was very enthusiastic about the whole thing.  The boys learned a lot, and I am less scared of art.

A-MAZE-ing Museum Trip

Today Nathan, Gavin and I took a trip to the Florida Museum of Natural History to see the Amazing Butterfly Exhibit which is a life-size maze that takes you through the life-cycle of a caterpillar/butterfly.  

Before we went into the maze we visited a little desk where the boys were able to dissect an owl pellet which is a nice euphemism for owl vomit.  Basically it is all of the parts of the prey that the owl can not digest, such as bones and fur.  

Nathan actually knew on his own that the bone he discovered was a jaw bone in the owl pellet.  The group of us together figured out that it was probably a vole that the jaw bone belonged to as you can see from this picture.  Awesome!  We had to leave after this so someone else could have a turn.  Thankfully the gentleman at this station did give us hand sanitizer as we departed.

Here we go!  This is the entrance to the maze.  As you can see we walk through a giant caterpillar which doesn't actually make sense since if we are supposed to be said caterpillars starting out as eggs we would really be getting laid by a butterfly, but whatever...

After we were hatched and we decided what we wanted to eat as caterpillars we had to learn how to walk.  This took a lot of group effort, but we eventually made it down the ramp.

Next we practiced crawling about on leaves.

We learned that there were lots of wrong turns we could take that were dangerous for a caterpillar to take.  The boys didn't like it, but we took all of the directions, wrong turns and right turns, just so we knew everything that could happen to us.

We turned into a chrysalis after we did all of our eating and shedding and eating and shedding and eating and shedding.  I didn't know this, but insect skin doesn't get bigger like people skin.  It is baggy for a while and then when it gets too tight they get rid of it.  Strange how wonderfully created we all are, insects and people both.

Now that we have hatched as butterflies we had to do some math to figure out which flower path had the most nectar.  We did the math and created a histogram and figured out that path three was definitely the best path to take for a hungry butterfly.

Gavin got trapped in the spider's web!  Oh no!  Lucky for us it was just play.

Now that they have eaten it is time for the butterflies to find a mate.  Here is Nathan getting his groove on doing a butterfly mating dance.  I don't think he really knew what he was doing, but he did have fun shaking his shiny butterfly wings.

At the end of their long journey it is time for the butterflies to go on their migration.  Migration at the museum was a short little zip-line across the room.  Lucky for my butterflies there weren't a lot of kids around so they got to migrate many times over.  Even the multiple times they migrated across the room is no match for the two thousand or more miles that real monarch butterflies migrate down to Mexico.  It was crazy to read that some of the butterflies that get blown off course have been known to show up in Great Britain.  Amazing!

Pizza! Yum!

Since we have started making healthier choices at home Jonathan has been making lots of breads from scratch.  We have even been grinding some of our own wheat at times.  This is a before baking picture of one of the pizzas Jonathan made with a whole wheat crust.  I guess we were so hungry for pizza that we forgot to get a picture of what it looked like after it was finished.  Either way, it was super yummy and we love it when we get to eat this slightly more healthy version of pizza!  (We put way too much cheese on it for it to be healthy for us.)

Gavin's Graduation

These are some pictures of Gavin's graduation ceremony from pre-school.  He had a fun pool party where he ate tons of food and got to swim with his friends.    In this picture are Ms. Carol his teacher from school and Ms. Kathy the Director of his school, Kid Works.

Here is a picture of Gavin going through his bag with all of his work from the year.  He was presented with pictures, a poetry book, a letter and number book, and a DVD with a video of him and his friends from school.  Of course the video was very cute and made all the moms (and dads) cry.

Here is Gavin who is a little embarrassed because they are talking about how challenging he was (in a good way).  They talked about how smart he was and how good he was at doing puzzles.  They also mentioned how they had to meet and talk about how they needed to keep coming up with extra work for him to do.  That's our Gavin!

It was fun and sad all at the same time to see how grown up he is getting.  Now that Gavin is older he will have more things that he will be involved in as well.  He is already looking forward to when he will be playing soccer like his brother.  We can't wait to see what adventures lie ahead for both of the boys.

Museum of Science and Industry

For Mother's Day we took our Granny and our Grandpa Paul to the Museum of Science and Industry.  We went to see the Body Exhibit which in retrospect was totally poor parenting on my part since I wasn't really thinking about the impact that it might have on the boys.  Nathan thought it was cool, but was overwhelmed by the exhibit.  The rest of the museum was awesome and we got to go free since we are members of the Natural History Museum in Gainesville.

Here is Nathan playing around with a probability experiment dealing with flipping a coin in the kids area.  

Uncle Chris, Nathan and Gavin uncovering fossils.  What fun.  I think they had more fun throwing around dirt than they actually had looking at the fossils.

AMAZING!!!! We all took turns lying on a bed of nails.  Granny had to press the button and stand watch to make sure that Nathan and Gavin were safe in case they didn't distribute their weight evenly across all the nails which were pretty sharp.

Here is Uncle Chris and Gavin standing in the middle of the hurricane tunnel.  The speeds only got up to about 60 miles an hour which really isn't that strong of a hurricane, but it was still fun to stand in the middle of it.

Here are Gavin, Nathan, and Stranger pretending to control some sort of tornado weather station.  I am not sure what this place was all about, but they liked the idea of controlling a giant TV set.

Cub Scout Trip to the Florida Aquarium

Here is Nathan making a beautiful face by one of the tanks... I am not sure which tank this is, because quite frankly there were a lot of fish tanks that night and these were the least interesting parts of the evening.  Some of the best parts we were not allowed to take pictures of including some of the behind the scenes tours.  We even got to go on the roof above the shark tanks and into the "kitchen" where they prepare the meals for all of the fish.  

Here are the boys eating their second dinner:  pizza and lemonade.  Yummy!  This is the weekend I started making healthier choices so I just sat here and watched everyone else eat. (As a side note I am actually posting these pictures about three months later... and I have lost 50 pounds)

Here are Eric and Liddy Matheny, cub scout family friends.  

This is some of the boys during the squid dissection.  I hope they were very respectful.  I was helping Gavin and Kate during their dissection at another table since none of the other moms wanted to get their hands dirty.  During the part where they split the parents up and explained the rules to the parents when they asked questions I raised my hand and asked what would happen when I kid wanted to take squid parts home.  The staff looked at me like I was crazy because the squid reeked and by the time the dissection was over it was just mush.  I felt pretty vindicated when Nathan actually asked if he could indeed take parts of the squid home.

Logan, Will and Nathan with Aquarium employee.  Perhaps we see a future marine biologist?

This is the only picture I have of Kate and Gavin dissecting squid and it is blurry, but I wanted proof that they were there too.

During the tours they let us use the elevators that they use to transport the sharks and other big fish around in.  The aquarium workers were kind enough to let us parents take pictures of our children trapped as if they were in a cage.  How thoughtful.

We couldn't take pictures at night when we actually were "sleeping with the fishes," because that would have freaked them out during their night time, but in the morning we got to run all over the place.  We got to visit the touch tank, which is what you see Gavin and Will at below.  these are star fish and other anemones that live in really cold water so it was hard to put your hand in it for too long. Brrrrr....

Nathan really liked hanging out by the sting ray tank and was convinced they were trying to give him a "hi-five".  I am just glad that they didn't hop out.  They were swimming pretty high on the edge of the tank.

We also had a scuba diver give the cub scouts our own show where he talked to us about the Tortuga Coral Reefs.  This is a picture of the group who stayed over night with the scuba diver.  It was very educational and very fun... although I was tired afterwards.  I am glad I just went to visit my mom when we were done instead of driving all the way back to Alachua!

Horse Farm Field Trip for First Grade

Every year in Alachua county first graders from every school are given free books about the horse Little Black.  The University of Florida has a horse farm and they bring a pony out to the school so the kids can meet it and then they are given their first book Little Black.  The kids practice for weeks and then they take a trip out to the horse farm where they are taught a bunch of different things about horses and meet some of the horse characters from the book.  When they leave they get a second book Little Black Goes to the Circus which they all enjoy reading on the way home.  Here are some pictures of Nathan's trip to the horse farms with Mrs. Jackson's class.

Nathan hanging out with Hassan and William, friends from his class, while waiting to see the different stations at the horse farm.

Nathan taking his turn practicing sitting on a Western style saddle.  Nice lean...

Here is Nathan practicing brushing a horse they thought was Big Red from the book.  I have to admit I was a little nervous with him being so close to the horse's back end, but we made it through.

Here is Nathan getting to pet the Pony Little Black at the end of the trip.  The trip was really quick, but I guess it had to be when you are getting all of the first graders from 25 different elementary schools through the horse farm.  Either way it was tons of fun!

The drive home was such a blessing.  To hear a bus full of first grade students reading their books was really exciting!  Not just because it was quiet, but because even the students who don't always enjoy reading did after this day.  

I Am a Slacker

I am a slacker and have missed putting pictures up for the last four months of stuff much to my mother's dismay... so now I will have to backdate stuff since it is the summer.  Here you go mom!  All the stuff I didn't do earlier.