Mystic Aquarium

We went to the Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, Connecticut this morning.  As we always do when we go to family fun places, we arrived right around opening time and enjoyed the aquarium before the crowds arrived.

There were a few neat touch tanks.

Kate enjoyed looking at the fish.

We found Nemo

Lunch time for the whales

We watched a Sea Lion Show - Kate wasn't in the mood, so Dad and Kate missed this.  It was a fun show; Collin, Reagan, and I really enjoyed it.

The coolest part of our trip to the aquarium was the Birds of the Outback exhibit.

When we walked in, we were each given a stick with bird seed on it for us to feed the birds.  The first bird that landed on my arm quickly flew off because I was so startled that I shook my arm.

Tom had lots of birds around him; he's a natural!

That is my hand with the two birds in the above picture.  It was a little difficult to manage since I was holding Kate in my other arm and she really wanted to touch the birds!  It was neat though.

Tom and Collin stayed for a while after Kate, Reagan, and I left the bird exhibit.  They had great interaction with the birds during this time, and Tom said that a bird attached itself to Collin's shirt and it was quite funny.  Tom couldn't get pictures or video of it because he was covered with birds at the time.  I wish I saw it! 

We had fun at the aquarium and then went for pizza, followed by frozen lemonades for the kids.  It was a great day!

Yankee Doodle Dandy

"Yankee Doodle Dandy" is the official state song of Connecticut. The song is thought to have been composed by an English army surgeon in 1755 as he watched a group of colonial soldiers pass by. The soldiers were so poorly dressed that they stuck chicken feathers in their caps to create a more uniform look. "Macaroni" was a slang term for a sharp dresser, or a "dandy" so the song was actually mocking the shabby appearance of the soldiers. The word "Yankee" came from the Dutch word for Johnny, and Dutch soldiers used it to make fun of English settlers. Eventually, the word became a nickname for New Englanders. As much as I have tried to explain this to C, the word "Yankee" is unacceptable to him; we are Red Sox fans!

As part of our Connecticut studies, C and R made Yankee Doodle Dandy hats. I let them choose different colored tissue paper and used masking tape to fit it to their heads. They decorated the hats with stickers and feathers. C and R marched/galloped around the room on their "ponies" while singing Yankee Doodle Dandy.*The facts in this post came from the book, N is for Nutmeg A Connecticut Alphabet by Elissa D. Grodin.

Connecticut whales

Connecticut is the next stop on our learning adventure.

The sperm whale has been the state animal of Connecticut since 1975. C and R were excited to make these adorable stuffed paper bag whales. You can find the complete directions at dltk's crafts for kids. We altered the directions a little by using pipe cleaners for the water coming out of the blowhole.

Materials: paper lunch bag, newspaper, rubber band, blue paint, googly eyes, blue pipe cleaners, blue construction paper

Directions:
1. Rip and crumple newspaper and stuff it into the lunch bag (leave some room at the end to make a tail). This is a great activity to develop the hand muscles, and that is important for pre-writers. So even if you don't do this craft, have your little one practice crumpling newspaper into a ball with one hand.

2. Wrap the rubber band around the stuffed lunch bag to create a tail, and then paint the whale blue. C used dark blue and R used light blue paint. 3. Once the paint is dry, add googly eyes or draw eyes on your whale and draw a mouth.
4. The DLTK directions instruct you to use paper for the water coming out of the blowhole but C and R cut pipe cleaners and just stuck them in and bent them a bit. I think they look cute, and cutting the pipe cleaners was great for that hand strength. I was actually surprised that our child scissors cut the pipe cleaners, but they did!
5. Finally, cut out some flippers and tape them to the bottom of the whale.
C and R drew waves on a piece of blue construction paper and we glued the letter "W" for waves and whale onto the paper. (See the photo above)

This craft is also great if you are talking about Jonah and the whale with your little one. You can even make Jonah and stuff him into your whale. (This idea came from DLTK too!)