Along with a "butterfly house" the museum had a parade of giant puppet butterflies and insects, face painting, special art projects, lots of demonstrations with live bugs, and games for the kiddos. We would have gotten a pretty butterfly face painting... but alas, my child has not learned the art of sitting still.
The museum was also having a food drive for the butterflies... bring in your old, rotting fruit (which the butterflies, apparently, love) and you get a free prize. I was curious what the prize would be. It turned out that for our donation we got not one, but two, butterfly specimens, labeled in little petri dishes (I guess we had a lot of old, rotting fruit to give--lol).
Elizabeth LOVED running around and around the butterfly house... watching butterflies... and running around and around some more! Below are pics of an owl butterfly... it later decided to land right on Vassil's face and totally freaked him out!
Ironically enough... all this week I was talking to Elizabeth about Butterflies. We even made butterfly crafts (we fingerpainted coffee filters for wings... and added a clothes pin and pipe cleaner for the body) and we talked a lot about caterpillers, and cocoons (only the museum calls them crystalists; not sure if there's a difference). And OF COURSE we read The Very Hungry Catepiller about a dozen times... so an impromptu trip to the "Butterfly Bash" fit with what we did this week! Almost as though I had planned it!
We also let Elizabeth play at the outdoor playground... which has a big music area where kids can bang on bongos, steal drums, cow bells... you name it! Elizabeth probably enjoyed that part the best! We also checked out all the animals (bears, wolves, lemurs, along with some barnyard animals as well) but we decided to skip the dinosaur exhibit (Elizabeth said multiple times that she was "Scared, Daddy!"; and to the dinosuar in the gift shop: "Not cute!!!").
The indoor toddler area was another favorite spot... Elizabeth was VERY fascinated with an exhibit where you place a ball on a track and watch it go around and around the area before falling down into a basket.
What a beautiful way to spend a beautiful Saturday!!!
