Exploring Exploration Place!

Last week, we took advantage of discounted tickets to a local kid's musem. Gary works at an area hospital and for employees it was buy one ticket get one free on the 27th. This just happened to fall on Gary's day off! We hadn't taken Mandy Rose to Exploration Place yet, so we decided that this was the perfect opportunity!

Exploration Place has a wide variety of exhibits for kids to explore and enjoy. The traveling exhibit right now is about whales. They had the skeletons of whales, rooms with recordings of whale song, a room where we watched a video about how sperm whales hunt via sonar, and even a mock life-size heart of a blue whale! It was big enough, you could climb through it! Other exhibits feature flight, nature in Kansas, tornadoes, dinosaurs, a castle where you can dress up and play, and a special area for kids 3 and under. It is really rather cool! Mandy Rose had a blast!

Mandy Rose started her adventure playing with the puzzles!

Lots of time was devoted to playing with the trains! There is a universal appeal to playing in water!

Horse Ride

We spent quite a bit of time at this riding horse! It rollercoasters down the ramp and shoots her across the room! Then, of course, parents come in handy in setting it all back up again! Those parental units do have a purpose after all!

Cooking with style!!

This is the coolest contraption! It allows the little ones to be inside a bubble! How wonderful!

Am I really flying this thing?

Wow! It's windy!

In one area, they have some stuff about tornadoes. This is Kansas after all! One machine simulates a tornado with smoke. Then, there was this chamber we stood in that simulated the winds associated with a tornado. It produced winds in excess of 80 mph! We were being blown away, but it was fun!!!

All in all, we had a wonderful family day! I have said before, it is amazing to see what has become commonplace to Gary and I through Mandy Rose's eyes! It all becomes new again!