Bug Fest

We went to the science museum downtown for their annual bug festival.  Outside and throughout the museum there were lots of tables set up with insects and little crafts for the kids.  It's always a gamble to go to these things, because they are usually really crowded and we're not sure how much Alice gets out of the special tables vs. just going to the museum on a less crowded normal day.  Plus, we never know how much to intervene in directing her attention away from the normal stuff that she can see any time and towards the things that are special for that day.  It's like when we go to Marbles and she just wants to paint, which she can do at home and at school.  Anyway, we generally try to direct her towards the special things without really enforcing it if she is interested in something else.

These pictures are all of her and Simon doing stuff they could have done at the museum anytime.  Alice did look at a lot of the bug exhibits though, but usually briefly.  She had no interest in touching anything, and given that we often show her bugs outside (and we usually have plenty inside our house too) it's understandable that she was more interested in the dinosaurs and other fun stuff.

Simon loves fish!

Alice had a lot of fun looking out the second story window with binoculars.

She got to dress up as a T-Rex!  I should note that they had lots of costumes of things like lady bugs, bumble bees, frogs, etc, but she went straight for the Tyrannosaurus.

And then, to her delight, she discovered a pile of dinosaurs on the floor!  That was not acceptable --they had to be sorted according to size and put into a line.  The one on the far right swims in the ocean, so she had to separate it from the rest.

We had a snack outside around lunch time and Simon had great fun walking back and forth along this wall.

While Zac was taking this picture (actually it was several) Alice wandered off.  We found her downstairs on the ground level, where we had started.  This is the second time she's wandered off (the first was at Target last weekend).  I think part of it is because she is so used to being on her own at school, and also because at these places everyone talks to her and is so friendly, so she feels like she's at school.  Or she just assumes we're keeping track of her and that she is not in fact lost. At any rate, she has no sense of people as being dangerous yet.  The only thing she's afraid of is people dressed up.  There was someone wearing a costume of a water drop and she was absolutely terrified.  So we need to do a better job of teaching her to not wander off.  Although in both cases I didn't feel she was in any danger (vs. wandering off outside near a busy street), the other people nearby (who had noticed an unaccompanied 3-year old, or in the case of Target, a girl shouting "Mommy" throughout the store) sure seemed to glare at us as if we were the worst parents ever.  In a way though, it's probably good that she has these little experiences in relatively safe environments so that she learns how to deal with the situation if she is lost.  But we're still going to teach her not to wander off.