Another activity that Alice really liked was pouring grains of rice into the cranial cavities of various creatures' skulls to measure which ones had the largest brains. (Hint: it's not always the ones with the biggest skulls.)
One station had the kids color fish, and then they took pictures of the fish and put them on a screen that made it look like they were swimming. It was a fun activity, and it was interesting to see how each kid chose to embellish the picture.
Simon added seaweed, waves, and a sun.
Alice added some extra markings and claws.
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Later that night, the primitive theme was continued when our neighbors Kim and Mike invited us over for a bonfire. We brought our stash of fireworks (actually just sparklers and glorified sparklers) that I'd bought for Simon's birthday and Zac's father's day. We never ended up using them in the summer because it stayed light so late and the kids needed to go to bed. Plus, I was really sick and life was hard. But now that it gets dark so early, we were able to do them and still get the kids home to bed at a reasonable hour.
Simon has a love/fear relationship with them. He's terrified of holding sparklers, but watches mesmerized.
After using up all the little sparklers, we went down by the pond and used up the bigger ones. Again, Simon was terrified and wanted to run to the other end of the pond to watch. I was ok standing really far away as long as I held him and promised the fireworks weren't going to get us. In this video, he keeps asking if it's the last one because at some point Zac mentioned he would save the biggest one for last, and Simon was very worried about how big the last one would be and how far away he would need to get.
Finally, it was indeed time for the last one. Simon ran really far away to watch it.
