Children's Museum of Wilmington

 Today, Uncle Mait and Jenny had to head back to work which made the kids sad.  Here are Andrew and Cairn working with clay.  We found some cheap but fantastic clay - it is so malleable - I love it.  I wish I could find it at home.  I will have to do some searching.

 Here is Uncle Mait in the kitchen making his breakfast.  The kids loved their smoothies too.

 After breakfast, Uncle Mait dropped us off at the Children's Museum and he went to work.  I wasn't able to take a lot of pictures because my phone was almost dead and we needed it to work when we wanted Uncle Mait to come pick us up.

This was the best Children's Museum we have ever been too.  It is actually 3 old buildings put together.  One building, Masonic Temple, was built 20 years after the birth of the Country.  Then the Cowan House, that used to be the governor's mansion in the summer.  It was built in 1840.  Finally, was the Greek church which was built in 1945.

The reason this museum was so fantastic - they had very square inch used.  There were 4 levels - the upper level had a train and reading room combination, and a restaurant where kids can role play running a restaurant.

The next level down was a grocery store, a large tinker toy building area, a puppet theatre and a bell tower.

The next level had a pirate ship and art room toward the back of the building and a dentist and teddy bear hospital toward the front.

These 2 areas were underneath the pirate ship and were just fun areas to pretend play.

The lowest level was full of science - building areas, magnets, color mixing, weather station, and wind tunnel.  The kids just kept finding things to explore.

The kids finally started getting hungry about 1:30 so we walked to downtown and had lunch at Dirty Harry's.  It was a burrito and juice place.  They had the word vegan on their window so we wanted to check it out.  We ordered nachos, tacos and a burrito - all vegan.  It was a great lunch.

Then we headed back to the museum for an invention class.  Today was ping pong ball invention.  The kids were to build a lever to shoot a ball high enough to catch.  I stood back and let them build.  It was interesting to see the 3 kids go in 3 different directions.

Cairn started small with tongue depressors.

 Here are Andrew and Skylar working.

 Skylar started work with a meter stick while

Andrew started with a paint stick.

They built levers and then started changing variables to see if they could get them to shoot higher or further.  They spent a good 45 minutes working away.  I just asked questions and tore tape, otherwise it was all their work.  I was very impressed.

30 minutes before the museum closed we finally left and waited for Uncle Mait to pick us up.  He picked us up from the Riverwalk where we had gone to explore while waiting for him.

We made it home in time to make dinner, watch a movie and get to bed.  It was a fun day.