Last Day of School and Port Discovery

The last day of school was a 1/2 day and there were some pool parties.  However, the thought of keeping track of 4 kids, 2 of whom can't swim without any help on a hot summer day had no appeal to me.   I decided to go to Port Discovery (the Children's museum in Baltimore)   The kids love that place and it is all inside, plus when most school kids still have another week it is completely empty in the afternoons.  We arrived at 1:15 when all the school groups were leaving, and only shared the place with a few other families. 

Amazingly we only went to 3 or 4 exhibits. 

I love the water area, they have a plumbers park with water flowing out of the floor and the kids can attach pipes to direct, block and divert water.  It amazes me to watch Buddy's engineering mind at work.  He and Princess were directing Munchkin and had a whole system worked out to make a high fountain.  They got soaked but loved it.

 This little guy I tried to keep dry, he carried that little spoon everywhere and love pouring it over and over.

We eventually moved to an area that had 2 staff people and they were taking notes as kids played with hammers, screws, dowels, boxes with holes, and some wheels.  My children had never seen this before in all our times there.  They honed in on it and the 3 big kids stayed there for almost 2 hours.  I left them together and let Simon play in the toddler area.  I came back to check on them every 20 minutes, but they didn't want to leave.

 

They built a combine

 They built a lawn mower

 They built a horse with wheels for legs.

 

They had stumbled upon a prototype area where the staff was testing a future exhibit. The staff loved the 3 kids.  They were the perfect testing demographic of ages, plus they had a long attention span, big imagination and were comfortable telling adults what they were doing. They even loved it when my kids broke stuff because then they knew it needed to be built stronger to withstand childrens museum use.  The kids loved it and the best part of all is that the staff person took my email and will send me an email next time they need stuff tested.  WIN.

 

This guy loved the one-on-one attention of the toddler area and the train.

We ended our day with a some pictures, a walk around the Inner Harbor and dinner, and almost pefect last day of school.