Camouflage at the Science Centre

Well, today we took the mighty Spills for the first time to the Ontario Science Centre. It was a great success--she's old enough now to do lots of the things there, and she knows a fair bit of background about some of the exhibits, thanks to her many conversations/messy experiments with her father. She loved the space stuff, and the electricity exhibits, and a lot of the natural history things. Best of all, it was free admission for teachers, which was a savings of $17!!

I was glad to see her goofing around with the other kids, as she sometimes hangs back. But I will say that I notice a definite trend. She's happiest when she is pretending to be someone or something else. She loved the simulated rainforest, because she could be "Keekachu the fruit monkey." She enjoyed being a bat in the pretend cave. She hung out in the beaver den for a long time, speaking in falsetto: "I'm just a little beaver and I'm in my den! Want to come in and visit me?" She found the beaver den to be such a hit, in fact, that she took some books in there from the bookshelf nearby, and pretended to be a "teacher beaver" who would read to anyone who was foolish enough to go in with her. It took quite a lot of cajoling to get her out.

My favourite pretending-to-be-someone else moment, though, was when she stood atop the simulated tornado, waved her arms in it, capered around, and shouted, "I'm Dorothy! I'm Dorothy!" to the amusement/bemusement of the people standing around.

But on the way home, she proved she was still a little grounded in reality. A song came on the radio and I said to her, "Who's that singing?" I was wondering if she'd recognize that it was the Beatles.

She said, half-asleep, clutching her Cinderella doll, "Oh...it's Paul."