Field Trip Thursday: Museum Crawl pt. 2

  Daddy had to travel to NW Missouri again for work today, so we got to tag along - yay!  Field trip!  This is one of the reasons we considered homeschooling in the first place, being able to be together more as a family when Daddy travels alot.  So today this meant visiting more stops on the Museum Crawl in St. Joseph! 
  We started out at Missouri Western State University where they have a Walter Cronkite memorial. 

The Missouri Western mascot

  We were a little early and walked the campus while we waited for the memorial to open.  The kids smiled and greeted the college students - yes homeschoolers are so unsocialized;) 

  The kids had no idea who Walter Cronkite was prior to our visit today, and to tell you the truth without the Museum Crawl, we might never have visited the memorial, but I'm glad it was a good prompt to do so.  The Crawl has certain questions you need to fill out at each stop. Both kids set out to work trying to find the answers while I chased a rambunctious Shorty (he did not tolerate Walter very well and we spent alot of time pushing buttons and riding the elevator and climbing the stairs).  When their questions were finished you could so see the learning styles of the kids come out.  Bubby is a sponge - he wanted to read & watch everything.  Mookie was content to learn a little, but when she accomplished her goal, her interest started to wane without much as far as interactive displays.  We gave Bubby 45 minutes and then had to drag him away. 
  On to the Remington Nature Center.  The kids had been dying to see this one last time and we had to skip it.  I am so glad we were able to give it a good chunk of time today - well worth it! 

  In addition to the questions we needed to complete for the Crawl booklet, the Nature Center gave us a scavenger hunt to complete.  There were 12 miniature plastic apples hidden all over the Center for us to find.  It took us a while, but we found them (with a little help on a couple).

You can see the red apple in the rattlesnake's mouth

  The displays here were great.  They had dioramas, bees, a water cycle and the favorite - animal tracks.  The tracks would appear and disappear on the sand when the narrator talked about them.

animal tracks

Water cycle - you can see the Missouri River in the background

  One of the other favorites was the trail of St. Joesph history.  They started you out in a cave with the Native Americans and worked you through European settlement to modern day.  Lots of hands on things and videos for all kinds of learners.
  This is what I saw most of the time...

I lost track of how many times Shorty and I looped through the history trail (stopping in the saloon with the cool doors each time to get a pretend drink) and back to the animal tracks and then back to the history trail...   I am so glad the other two are independent learners because I didn't do much except keep the short one busy:) 
  We would have preferred to walk the trails outside too but we needed to meet up with Daddy.  The meeting place was actually at the town of New Market, MO which is where my gg-grandpa Oscar Mauzey was born in 1859.  The kids played at the playground while we waited for Daddy to arrive.  It was neat to look around and wonder what structures might have been there when Oscar was alive. 

Resting on account of "stage 4 hiccups" (2 hiccups every 4 seconds)

We had a pretty cheap day today, Walter's memorial was free & Remington cost us $5 for all of us.  The favorite was the Nature Center, but they enjoyed all of it.  I see another trip to St. Joe for museums in our future.  The kids are hooked!