Homeschool Day at the Magic House

Yesterday, we went to The Magic House, a Children's Museum in South St. Louis. We were also sharing a car with Rick that day since my lovely van was in the shop, so we had to drop him off at work pretty early in the morning (for us) and had two hours to kill before The Magic House opened at 9.30. So, I took the girls to a local breakfast diner and we took a tour of Target before making it to the museum. It really was a pretty fun morning, other than I abhore driving a manual, which is what Rick drives. Reminding myself that we're blessed to have two vehicles. That being said, my van was back last night and I'm very happy, cracked bumper and all. :o)

Shiloh insisted on climbing the bean stalk, which I neglected to photograph, partly b/c she was moving too fast. SarahMae thought about joining the other five hundred cabin-feverish children who were climbing the bean stalk as well, but thought the better of it and she and I waited until Shiloh was done. 

 And made faces. :o)

The big draw was the "Sid the Science Kid" traveling exhibit that was there this month. We haven't watched Sid in awhile, but it was still exciting. They had his whole house from the TV show set up for the kids to explore -- his bedroom, the kitchen, the play area, his school room. It was so cool!

She misunderstood the purpose of a magnifying glass at first....

...but we figured it out together. :o)

Moving on, there's a caterpillar tunnel that they thoroughly enjoyed for thirty minutes.

Then, their favorite part of the entire House, the Attic Tea Room. They could spend all day in this teeny tiny attic room with tea party supplies and "old-timey" dress up clothes. And we may have, except for the fire alarm that went off while we were inside. In the smallest room on the highest floor. SO, we were about three flights of stairs down when they made an announcement that it was accidentally tripped by construction workers on another part of the campus, so we moved on to another part afterwards.

We also visited the Children's Village, which is SO COOL. Alas, every other child also thought it was so cool and I was so frenzied trying to keep track of both kiddos in the mass of humans that I didn't even think to pull out my camera. It was really neat, though, and I can't believe that we've never been to that area before. They had a child-sized village, with a bank, a hospital, a library, a pizza restaurant, an ice cream stand, a grocery store, etc. It was so awesome!

Lastly, we moved on to the outdoor Kids Construction Zone. They moved things, used tools, used a lever system to haul things up and down. I had to pull them out of there only because the Magic House was closing for the day. Also, we found one of Shiloh's best friends, Gracie, there as well!

Later that night, after Shiloh's ballet class, she brought out one of her Build A Bear houses from one of her stuffed animals, asked me to cut a door out of it, and she and SarahMae used markers to decorate it for a "shared" doll house. They sat there for almost an hour, it was amazing. :o)

We really do love the Magic House, and it's neat when they open it up to homeschoolers only at a reduced rate of just $3 per person, which is a huge discount!