A Field Trip to MOSI

Wow! We had such a great time on this field trip! It was really a spontaneous trip, as MOSI was having their Home Educators Open House and we had totally forgotten about it! But good friends of ours reminded us, so we got our schoolwork done over the weekend and went with them to experience it. We had never been. There was SO much to see and do, that when I started to write this post, I couldn't decide what to write about first- so here goes my list...

First, the boys (and our friends "the girls") went into the Hurricane Chamber and experienced winds in excess of 74 mph. Next, we went to Disasterville, where we learned about wild fires, tornadoes, earthquakes and lightning.

The Bioworks Butterfly Garden was magnificent! There we could see caterpillars, chrysalises and of course, butterflies! We learned that you can propogate milkweed by simply planting the cuttings.



There was The Amazing You exhibit, where we began by learning all about the growth and development of a human baby. That was followed by how to stay healthy as we grow.


There was an exhibit on flight, space, and beyond called Our Place in the Universe, which tied in nicely with our study of birds and flight. DS#2 even got to hold an air foil (and anything else he wanted) in a small wind tunnel to see which had the best effect... We saw the movie 3D Sun, which told about twin satellites sent out to monitor sun storms and the effects of these on the earth, and especially on GPS systems and satellites.
I think every one's favorite place was Kids In Charge. At first, the kids thought this meant that they could order us to buy them ice-cream there, but once we explained that, since they were in charge, THEY had to buy it, they never mentioned it again... But, there were so many hands-on experiences there! DD got to crawl under (or over or through) a giant web. There were puzzles to work, pyramids to build, frozen shape shadows, lever tug-of-war, caves to crawl through, giant gears to experiment with, optical illusions, and glowing rocks, just to name a few.


Then an exhibit called "Fields to Meals" allowed us to learn where our food comes from- we could milk a plastic cow (it actually produced something that resembled milk, LOL), and see how food gets from the farm to us.

When it was time to go, the kids were not ready to go home, but all good things must come to an end, right?