Oh Hai!
Since I had a pretty decent weekend and nothing's getting done at work, I might as well blog.
Without telling the kids beforehand, we took them on Saturday to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. We've had tickets since January to see the special Star Wars exhibit and do the Millennium Falcon experience.
The Star Wars exhibit itself was pretty cool. There were a lot of movie props from Luke's land speeder to battle droids to wookies (3 of them in fact!). The props in each area were related to current technology and an activity. After seeing the land speeder, you could learn about maglev trains and then experiment with Lego maglevs. Walking droids such as the battle droids and C3PO were paired with a demonstration of the difficulties in simulating walking.
My favorite was an activity using RFID that brought sabacc to mind. It was a sim game, building a spaceport, moisture farm, or jawa community. We played the jawa game. The playing area was a circular turntable about 2 feet in diameter. The player had a deck of cards containing arcane symbols which represented elements of the civilization - a sand crawler, a moisture collector, etc. When you placed a card on the tabletop, the corresponding piece of equipment was superimposed in that spot on the monitor in front of you. As you spun the tabletop, the view in the monitor turned as well. I doubt I'm explaining it well, but it looked really cool.
Snurf had a great time exploring the museum. Junior was a little intimidated by reality. It's one thing to see something in a book or movie and it's completely different to actually see it. We've read a book that has a picture of the statue of Ben Franklin, but it's HUGE in reality and Junior wouldn't go near it. He's seen the Star Wars movies a bunch, but he would not go close to the props.
We took our time and didn't see the whole museum. I was stunned by the enormous steam locomotive in the basement and was more surprised to learn that it actually moved. Junior was scared of the Heart the first time through, but we walked through it two more times before the end of the day. Snurf and her fear of heights just freaked out over the Sky Bike.
On Sunday, I took Snurf to the high school to see their performance of Fiddler on the Roof. She knew several people in the performance, and it managed to hold her attention. She may have asked me only once or twice what time it was. The whole ride home I got to listen to her singing "L'Chaim - To Life!" I found myself re-writing the characters during the show, putting my own interpretation on the lines and deciding how I would write them if it was a game post. Although I enjoyed the show (it was my first time seeing this musical), it was not fun explaining to Snurf the actions of the soldiers or why the people had to leave their village.
And now it's Monday. I forgot to set my alarm and haven't woken up yet. Let's hope I get more productive as the week goes on.