Maryland Science Center

Of all the places we went over spring break, the Maryland Science Center was my favorite... located right on the Inner Harbor, we easily spent a full day here.

The MSC is closed on Monday - that's a large part of the reason we went back to the Franklin Institute, so we planned to spend Tuesday and Wednesday in Baltimore.  Adult admission is $14.95; Children 12 and under are $11.95 each, a savings of just under $54 thanks to that Pittsburgh Children's Museum membership that I have been having such a good time using! 

Using a pulley.

Many of the exhibits had a very general theme to them while others highlighted things that were specific to Maryland or the Chesapeake Bay.  

Clouds... or dry ice.

We started off in Newton's Alley where we once again were able to explore many of the principle's we've learned about thanks to Sid the Science Kid (I really do love that show!).   Pulleys, levers, vortexes, gravity, electricity.  All in one very interactive room.  This is a room we came back to several times and seemed to have the most fun playing tug of war.  It's much easier on one particular side... if you want to know how that can be, you should go and check it out!

We watched a catapult launch rubber chickens at plastic laundry baskets... Angry Bird style, before heading upstairs for a while.  Harry's Big Adventure is a limited exhibit and gave us the change to explore a house looking for various bugs - we founds roaches under the sink, bedbugs in the sheets, fleas in the dog's bed, and ants crawling through the kitchen window, not to mention the termite damage to the structure of the house.  It was fun!

Your Body, the Inside Story was a place that we returned to several times simply because the kids got such a kick out of the bed of nails...

Of course I tried this out too... I found it a little uncomfortable in my shoulders - something I am told many women seem to complain about.  I'm going to guess it has something to do with the extra weight of my chest...  

Aside from the bed of nails, the coolest thing for little kids is an exhibit of digestive sounds - swallowing, tummy grumbles, burping, farting, pooping.  How could you not love it???

There's an exhibit called Follow the Blue Crab that didn't hold much appeal for the kids, though it was interesting to learn about how crabs develop and what sort of predators are a threat to them (seems I am one of them since I had crab for dinner Tuesday night... but that's another story). 

One of my favorites was Dinosaur Mysteries.  Some life-size replicas of dinosaurs that would have lived in Maryland were included and there were many interactive activities.  The kids were able to do dinosaur tracings, use computers to create their own dinosaurs (since there's no real proof what sort of coloring, markings, etc. dinosaurs have, the kids were able to imagine their own).

This is a big one!!!

We took another shot at seeing a show in a planetarium - this one with a Sesame Street theme.  This one went much better than the Franklin Institute's show on Black Holes and it held both kids interest the whole time. 

Experimenting...

Everyone had a chance to throw on lab coats and goggles and do a few experiments to determine what a few unknown powders were... things like baking soda and laundry soap.  We tested to see whether things were acidic or basic, how they reacted to a solution being added (some bubbled, some didn't), etc. and were able to identify four powders.  It was just like high school chemistry, minus the scary teacher and the high failure rate!

Overall, it was such a fun day... we stayed until the museum closed at 5:00pm then wondered around the Inner Harbor for a bit before meeting a college friend and her family for dinner at McCormick & Schmick's.  Fantastic seafood and kids that behaved much better than I would have expected considering it was more formal a restaurant than we typically take them too.

Goofing off in the Inner Harbor!

Next up:  A Surprise Destination...