A Whale of a Good Time at the EcoTarium

This morning we made our bimonthly visit to the EcoTarium for preschool story time. It is one of Daniel's favorite things to do. We forgot that it was Veterans Day until we got there and saw the throngs of people. Luckily we were able to get a ticket! (It is free, but you have to get a ticket as they limit the number of families that can participate.)

The topic of the story time was "Whales". Miss Kathy read a story about saving the whales and then we took a little field trip out to one of the main exhibit rooms where they had set up a 40 or 50 foot "whale" - a plastic whale inflated with a large fan that the kids were invited to go into and pretend what it would be like to be inside a whale! While Daniel was a little dissappointed that there wasn't a real whale, he loved getting inside and playing pretend. We then did a craft and made a necklace in the shape of a whale tale.

Afterward we poked around some of the exhibits - the outer space exhibits are always a hit. Daniel loves visiting the air table. (See the picture) His favorite thing to do is to get the small plastic ball to hang in air. He delights in adjusting the air to watch the ball rise and fall!

After playing outside on the payground for a while and revising the air table on the way out, we purchased a book in the gift show and returned home. We read the book, "On Earth" by G. Brian Karas when we got home and both loved it! Great book introducing the concepts of the revolution of the earth, the earth's axis and equator, and the journey of the earth around the sun resulting in seasons. We were then inspired to begin work on a craft project - constructing a model solar system. We talked about the relative sizes of the planets and that the sun is not a planet, but rather a star. It was lively conversation and I was impressed on Daniel's grasp of the concepts as the result of his nightly conversations with his dad at bedtime. They have been putting up glow-in-the-dark stars and constellations in his room and talking about them for the past few months. Yet again, I'm inspired by my son's love of learning and for rolling abstract ideas around in his head!