Saturday, January 17, 2015

From the Children's Museum

No agenda here, no story to tell, no particular message to deliver, just some small but important moments from our winter visits to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis:
Syd is in love with this DIY paleontologist Ken. See the field jacketed fossil? See his hands covered in plaster?!?



This Chihuly installation isn't often cleaned, so it was a treat to see it happening!
the installation from below




Syd is a scuba diver measuring some cannons that have just been discovered in the Caribbean--could they have been a part of Captain Kidd's ship?
Here you can watch real artifacts undergoing electrolytic reduction to remove their concretions. One cannon was recently removed after completing the process that we had observed throughout approximately four YEARS of visits!
 I feel a little poignancy sometimes at this museum, because I know that Will, in particular, is really beginning to push the maximum age for their target audience. As for Will herself, however--she'd never notice. She knows more about electrolytic reduction and edmontosaurs than most of the other small visitors, sure, but she still happily scoops and shovels rubber rocks in the construction site with them, and sends boats down the long and elaborate canal system should-to shoulder with the smaller kids, adding ever more to her intrinsic understanding of the maths and sciences as she does.

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