We explored more of Montreal's family friendly exhibits. On Tyler and Brian's birthdays, we headed to the
science center, located at the Old Port. It was a rainy day, so really perfect for being indoors. The boys posed in the cave-man display. During our visit, we saw a 3-D IMAX movie on the Galapagos Islands. It was fascinating and I was happy to see both boys did well at the movie - I wasn't sure if they would both be willing to wear the 3-D glasses, but they did great!
The first stop in the science center was to make a newscast. Brennan was a little too young for this, but I thought it was awesome and wish I could have done it myself! They gave you a handful of topics to choose from. Once you picked a topic, you then watched expert testimonies related to the topic and chose which clips to include in your newscast. We then made our own introduction and conclusion to the story. It all was put together and for a 2 minute newcast-style video.
We headed to the hands-on exhibits for science exploration. The exhibit below allowed you to see how hydro-electric power works. You could control the speed of the water flow, which impacted the speed at which the transformer spun, which impacted how many lights would light up on the display.
Brennan was testing out the pulley system. He could lift himself up because it was a 3 pulley system. There were two huge rooms of all sorts of hands-on experiments/observations to make. It was fantastic.
The main room wasn't quite for Tyler's age, so we headed to the 4-7 year old room. Tyler spent at least an hour playing with this "brick" house. He loved spinning the wheel that would transport the bricks to the roof of the house. You could basically contract the side walls of the house and the roof tiles with the bricks. There were at least 10 other kids working with him. It was fun to see him interact in this setting. He did pretty well.
The next day, the weather cleared up, but it was MUCH hotter! It was the only hot day of the trip. We went to the Insectarium and the Botanical Gardens - both part of the "Space For Life" center, which includes the Biodome. The insectarium had thousands of bugs (mostly dead) on display. It was very neat! The photo below shows a live exhibit of ants, which you can't really see in the picture. There were thousands of ants at work bringing food all along the branches of the tree. We saw insects related to areas all around the world. We got to explore the differences between male and female insects, explore the life cycle of insects and see some exotic insects like tarantulas, big leaf bugs, etc. The boys loved it.
We then walked through the Botanical Gardens. Our favorite was the Japanese Garden. The photo below is of a tea house. I would have loved to go in for a traditional tea ceremony, but obviously, with the kids, that was a no-go!
This was the view from the tea house.
The boys were all up for walking through the gardens and checking out the Japanese styles buildings. It was beautiful. They even enjoyed the other gardens as we walked.
It was a hot day, maybe too hot and too much walking in the heat! But, we had a nice time and the boys spent a ton of time in the pool that night!
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