City On a Hill Academy
• Aug. 28, 2006 - Monday at the Museum
Today was Bill's first day of "not going to work on a work-day" of this vacation. Due to the length and expense of our previous vacation, we are staying at home, and doing day trips.
Today was the perfect day to check out the Portsmouth Children's Museum.
We have never spent much time in Portsmouth, so it was fun to see what a small old "port" village it was at one time. Tiny, winding streets, and interesting houses and old cemetaries!
The Children's Museum is housed in the old town hall/meeting house. (I think.. I really should check my facts before publishing them on the internet. ;) )I thought I'd tell a bit about some of our favorite things there.
When you first enter, there is a neat musical wall, with wooden shapes, which, when lightly pressed emit a sound of one sort or another. There are lights that are connected with the sound, as well as a monitor, that shows the soundwaves. Pretty fun... we'll have to play with that more on another visit.
The next place to visit is a "castle" that is filled with "patterns". A wall that is carpeted, so that the "masons" can velcro the stones to the fireplace, a floor with pattern block carpet shapes, to create a lovely floor, and a plexiglass window with triangle "leading", and a veritable rainbow of vinyl triangles to decorate the window with. VERY fun! (I could have spent some time here, myself!)
Rebecca and Joshua enjoyed checking out the "Yellow Submarine", which is a nice energy consumer, especially for smaller children.
The second floor is where we spent the rest of our time, and indeed, most of it was at one table... but before we got there...
There is a room that is all about Kaleidescopes, mandalas, and repeating patterns. There is a triangular mirror set up (kaleidescope of sorts), that you can duck under/into, and see yourself into infinity! (Kind of made Bill a little queasy, but I liked it! ;) )There is a computer for making designs... I didn't check it out fully, so can't report on that much.
The next place is where we spent about 2 hours! There was a sturdy triangular table with a crate of "blocks" next to it. I recognized them as Kapla blocks (because our friend Kathy D has a small set). These are so very cool!
The blocks are precision cut, with each piece being 1x3x5 of the unit that they use (perhaps a 1/2 centimeter? I'm not sure). At any rate, apparently because of their particular configuration, and the precision with which they are cut, they are able to balance extremely well! We had some pretty neat structures going, and Kathy has said that her children have built towers and/or bridges on the floor, and the yhave survived regular "living" around them for a few days before falling down!
I will try to post a couple of pictures later of a few of the structures we built. But I will say... Joshua was going for the Frank Lloyd Wright (please tell me that my mommy brain got the architect correct!) look, Rebecca was going for triangular stability, and I had fun with rotating design and height (I built all the way up to the ceiling)
These blocks are incredibly neat, and they immediately found their way onto Rebecca and Joshua's Christmas "Wishlist". :)
As for the rest of the museum... well, we didn't have time to check it out, so that will have to be another visit, although I'm sure that we'll spend some time with the Kapla blocks again, as well!
After the museum closed, we wandered back to our car via an old cemetary and an overflow pond, where the kids collected acorns to use for flower fairie dishware.
We then went downtown, to eat at an Indian Resteraunt~ YUM! and then continued to explore~ windowshop~ the streets of Portsmouth for a while longer. On across the bridge to Kittery, and the outlets for about 1/2 hour, and finally to the Kittery Trading Post on our way out... where Joshua made the "only" purchase... of $1 for 15 spent bullet casings! ;) Funny boyo!
So... there's the first day of vacation... and it was a good one!
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