Vancouver Telus World of Science

On Monday Tove and I went to the Vancouver Science Centre. No one else wanted to come, so just the 2 of us went.

We took the sky train from Scott Road Station.

When Tove saw the centre, he was very excited!

I was expecting it to be as lame as it used to be 20 years ago. It totally was not! It was packed with activities and hands on experiments. I quickly realized that we had not arrived there soon enough. It was 2:50pm when we arrived and the centre closed at 5pm.

Toviel using his energy to create enough power to power up a 5-watt smart phone.

Watching a machine work with levers & gears.

We saw a presentation on bubbles. This science dude made bubbles filled with hydrogen instead of oxygen, then he set the bubbles on fire!

And he also made a bubble around a little boy. Toviel really enjoyed the bubble talk.

....more hands on exhibits....

We didn't get to see everything or do all we wanted, but we sure had fun doing all we did!

The ride home was during rush hour and a little squishy on the sky train.

The entire afternoon was delightful, and I'm so glad we went. I think it has been about 18 years since I've been there!

Sunday Afternoon at Crescent Beach

This afternoon we headed to Crescent Beach for low tide. According to the forecast, today was the nicest day as far as the prediction of the weather, so even though it was cloudy and a little drizzly, we went.

During low tide it is fun to venture out on the sand bars to see what sort of creatures you can find.

Elijah found a small crab that usually burrows in the sand at low tide. I don't know how he spotted it, but he was pretty excited to find it.

He released this little guy into a big tidal pool.

We also found some hermit crabs. They are one of my favorite animals, likely thanks to Eric Carle.

Here, Toviel is holding two hermit crabs in their shells.

The little one is very shy.

We found a couple of other larger crabs that were on the sand and pretty lethargic. One of them was flipped over on it's back. So we performed several other rescue missions.

We saw sand worm holes and a few worms peeking their heads out every once in a while.

One thing that puzzled us was why were their tunnels able to stand up to the receding tide. Pictured above are the tunnels / burrows that they build.

After our adventure on the beach, we went to Moby Dick's for an early supper.

In the evening Toviel came for a walk with me down in the Bog. He commented on how there were so many different kinds of flowers, all very beautiful.

 

He also said that the songs the birds were singing were beautiful. He has the same appreciation for nature as I. And I was also happy to have pleasant company during our walk. My mini-me. 😊

A Part in a Lego Mural

A while ago we went to a local mall to the unveiling of an empty Lego canvas that was going to be transformed into a massive mural for the mall in honor of the new Lego Store that is opening next month.

We went to this ceremony (it was boring...a lot of PR and speeches, and well....just boring). We waited in line for a long time to build our piece of the mural. The wait was pleasant though, because we had a lot of friends there.

We ended up back at the same mall 2 days later and built another small section of the mural, with absolutely no line up involved.

This time I actually built a square, too. Yay for me!!

Here's what the mural looked like on Thursday, May 23:

And here I made the boys pause in the mall for a photo op:

You may have noticed that Toviel is wearing boxers with an undershirt. So in essence, he is wearing only underwear to the mall. And, his undershirt is on backwards. He made quite a few people smile in the mall.

We went back to the mall on June 3, and the mural was complete, except for the very centre tile.

Today we went back to the mall for The Lego Store's grand opening. The line up to get into the store was ridiculous, but we had a peek into the store and it is a nice size and we look forward to going into the store next week! 

Beaty Biodiversity Museum at UBC

Yesterday we ended up driving to Vancouver. Originally we were going to travel today. Then we were going to leave Friday night and then do some night driving, and arrive in Vancouver in the morning. We ended up leaving at noon on Friday and arrived in Vancouver at midnight, which was actually 11pm local time. I was actually so proud of us for making great time and travelling the distance without major complaining and some tears shed. I did so good!!!

(The boys travelled perfectly as usual.)

This morning we get up and decide to go to the Beaty Biodiversity Museum at UBC. Our desire to go was prompted by the full blue whale skeleton on display there. And it was well worth it.

As usual, the picture doesn't do it justice. It was really something to see it in person.

We saw a 45 minute documentary about how this whale skeleton was found, extracted, cleaned, and assembled. It was quite the process, a story of determination, overcoming hurdles, discouragement, and finally success.

The rest of the museum was overwhelming. Interesting and awesome, but completely overwhelming!

You can see all the hallways that extend from this main hallway. Each hallway is filled with specimens of mammals, fish, insects, birds, fish, shellfish, sea animals, foliage and flowers, fungi, bacterium, reptiles, coral, dinosaurs, and probably a bunch of other things that I missed.

On top of all the awesomeness of it, admission to the museum was free today, and we didn't even know that until we got there!!

"There is no charge for awesomeness!" ~Po

Wednesday: Marine World

Because of the awesome work Cris has done at West Edmonton Mall, he received some free passes for the mall attractions. We had 4 that I thought were expiring this month, so the boys I went and took one of their friends. I couldn't bear for a free pass to go to waste, and Cris was simply too busy to go. The boys picked Marine World to go to.

I was probably more upset than I should have been to discover that one of the passes had already expired, and ended up having to pay for the extra person I so badly wanted to come with us because I had this extra free pass, which I didn't actually have. Apparently I don't pay enough attention to detail.

Moving along....

We really enjoyed the touch tanks. We got to touch stingrays, sharks, and anemones. The stingrays actually like being touched, so they swim right up to you.

We also saw sharks and sea turtles and then some divers got in the tank to feed the shark. They do this once-a-week up-close-and-personal encounters to maintain relationship with the sharks and to ensure the sharks are healthy. The divers pet the sharks, check for anything unusual, that sort of thing.

The sea turtle was pretty funny. It kept swimming around getting its flippers stuck in the divers hoses and even briefly entangled itself in a shark.

We saw the sea lion show. Loved it. I think I missed my calling in life. I'd love to be an animal trainer and have that relationship of trust with a wild animal.

After that we saw a presentation on the African penguins.

And here's Elijah...petting a shark:

It was a fun-filled afternoon. The boys even got to play with their friend at our house for a bit.

In the evening Elijah started on the next book in the Percy Jackson series called "The Sea of Monsters". He did some math, mostly multiplication strategies and commutative properties. Toviel started reading "Flat Stanley", although I wish he had picked something more challenging. He also did some math. He is working on addition strategies and is currently learning the two-5's strategy when adding two numbers when they both are between 5 and 9.

He also used his geo-reflector to explore symmetry and reflections.