Parenthood - 2012-02-11 Cool Science Saturday (Nature)

February 11, 2012

Auntie Heather and I took Elizabeth, Josie, Daniel and Maria to Cool Science Saturday at the Museum of Nature! We got there right at opening and it was beautifully quiet. Then we got to touch the oldest rock in the world. The geologist showed us how they crush a sample of the rock and then look at it under a microscope. The microscope had a screen so the kids could easily see what was there. He grabbed a tiny piece of sand and put it on Dan's thumb so he could get a sense of the scale.

The "insect guy" was very enthusiastic, but even his assurances that spiders only bite if you squeeze their abdomens didn't make me want to fondle it the way he was! I did not even try touching it. I'm sure Auntie Yukiko will be interested to hear that spiders eat with chopsticks - apparently their fangs have a similar motion. We also got to see stick insects and hissing cockroaches. The demonstrator even annoyed the cockroach to make it hiss. I was disturbed to hear that we actually have tarantulas here in Canada. Most are pretty little, but still...

Heather took Josie to the prehistoric monster movie, but we deemed it too scary for the other kids, especially Daniel who is still getting over his previous 3D movie trauma. So instead we "fished" and made a 3D winterlude card craft (Dan made a crown). I wasn't clear on whether the markers were supposed to draw in 3D or if the card/crowns had special 3D designs but either way they looked the same to me regardless of whether I was wearing special glasses. The kids all oohed and aahed but I'm suspicious that they were imitating the staff...

On February 24, 2012 at 04:03 pm
Grandma H. said:

Great 3D glasses--who needs a silly movie. As for tarantulas, aren't they the ones that escaped from houses where they were being kept as pets?

On February 24, 2012 at 09:47 pm
Mary @ Parenthood said:

What I thought the guy said was that Canada has native tarantula species, mostly very small, though a quick google search seems to disagree. Maybe he just meant ugly hairy spiders, or was pulling my leg. English was obviously not his mother tongue (not French either) so it's possible I misunderstood.