Exploratorium

Each of us went to the Exploratorium last year on a date with Norm/Daddy.  Here’s the story of our mini-adventure in San Francisco!

Captions by: Melody, Emily, Joyce 
Photos by: Dad Norm + Mom Joyce
More info here –> exploratorium.edu

 

Emily’s Visit

I liked the first part of my visit. I liked the spinny thingy at the front.

Vibration! So much science!

Love the sand art! Sand that spins while you do art!

Me gathering up the mist!

Get a marker and choose a spin! (Like a HUGE Spirograph!)

Smoke tornado next to the marker art!

Bubble solution thingy! Make it as tall as you can!

Mirrors all around!

Different colored lights!

Joyce’s Visit

For our anniversary, we took BART out to San Francisco for a day date. We had lunch at eatsa, which we may blog about another time. Yummy! And then we headed to the Exploratorium. I have only been to the old location as a kid for a field trip and one other time when Melody was little. I’ve also been in the lobby and store of this “new” one but it was my first time visiting. It is a lot bigger and newer (of course), so if you go, make sure to allow time, especially if you go through the school year during school field trip hours. There are so many fun and educational exhibits to explore. Afterwards, we headed for an early dinner at Roy’s Restaurant to avoid the crowds coming from work and/or tourists. We’ll blog about this too. Yummy again! 🙂

Melody’s Visit

We traveled there by BART for a field trip with our homeschool group, and then we waited awhile for everyone. But it turned out they were on the other side of the building! So we went inside to go into the building.

This first picture is me with a tornado.

I liked this next one below. First, you drag the material up with your magnet, then you release and it makes a HUGE cloud (only if you hold for a few seconds).

So this next one below is me with a soap film painting. First, you drop the bar down, gather soap, then bring it up as far as possible without it popping. You have to get a lot of soap to make a bubble. Then I blew on it to make it like a bubble ripple.

This is me and my dad with a circle of electrical lights.

This is me with a tree stump – I actually counted the rings. The tree was about 160 years old, but I might have counted wrong.

This is me with a water tornado. This is one of my favorites because you can control the amount of water you put in.

This is a mist-area thingy. So you basically wave your hands around to gather a lot of mist. I couldn’t do it that well because there was a lot of people, but my dad could do it really well.

This is a tracker to show where different transportation methods have been in the last couple of months, days, hours, etc. You can move it back and forth to find out!

This is my favorite picture when we were sitting in the quiet bay observatory.

Thanks for a great time, Exploratorium!

Emily’s fave: The sand art!

Melody’s fave: The quiet bay observatory. I liked it there, it was much more peaceful.

Joyce’s fave: Hard to choose but I liked the area with the parts of the typewriter

Norm’s fave: Shadow Box

Some Notes + Tips from Mom Joyce:

• Definitely check if your library has a pass for the Exploratorium to save a bit of money as you will probably spend some getting there and for a meal as well. Our library has Discover and Go.
• Avoid the school field trip crowds by going a bit later.

Have you been on a local mini-adventure lately? Where did you go?