One of the things we did while visiting my grandparents in Pittsburgh was go to the Carnegie Science Center. We went there almost every visit while growing up, and it was so much fun. They had different exhibits, a planetarium, an Imax theater, live shows about electricity and weather and all different kinds of stuff, a model train room, and even a tour of a real submarine. And that's all still there. It's mostly for kids 7 and up, but they added a new section for younger kids on the top floor, so we took the girls to that and then went and looked around the rest of the science center. Robbie even got to take a tour of the submarine (did it when I was younger...didn't like the small spaces, so I stayed with the girls). We didn't see any of the shows because only Gwen and Grace would really be able to sit through something like that, so we just walked around and looked at everything. But they had so much fun!!
Gwen was looking at a model train that was right outside of the model train room. She thought it was neat that she could touch and play with it.
Up in the kids section they had this huge spot in the room to build with these giant foam blocks. Robbie and Gwen built this cool building...that was Gwen's favorite part of the room. She kept going back there to build things over and over again.
Part of the room was fenced off into this section with a bunch of those balls you see in a ball pit. You could gather them up in one of these wagons or just in your hands, and they had all these cool different ways to get them up into this huge bucket about halfway up the room, and when the bucket was full, it dumped the balls down onto the kids. Robbie and I loved playing in there with the girls too thanks too all the cool sling shots, air tubes, and bucket systems that took the balls to the top. Gracie loved it too.
Most of the room was filled with this huge huge huge water table. That by far was Grace (and Georgia's) favorite part of the room. Grace loved sticking the balls into the different tubes and trying to push them down as far as she could. Thanks to the water pressure (shooting the water up and out of the tube like a water fountain) Gracie got pretty wet, but she didn't care. (Notice the climbing wall in the back? Gwen was the only one brave enough to try that out...but the picture of her doing it came out bad...)
Right by the rock climbing wall was a section that was all about construction. They had one of those toy diggers that kids can sit on and control digging with two different levers, and dig into a bunch of plastic blocks. There were also kid sized hard hats available for them to wear too. And then there was the construction tunnel. Georgia loved climbing around inside of that.
Once Georgia found the water table though we couldn't get her to do anything else. She loved playing there in the water with all the balls and seeing what all the different levers and fountains could do. She also loved taking the buckets and shovels and cups and dumping water everywhere.
They had a lot of different sections there. There was a hands on section where you could experience what an earthquake was like, a wind tunnel was like, experiment with sounds and vibrations, with hot and cold, play with your shadow, and create "hurricanes" and "tornados." There was also a section with a bunch of aquarium tanks and lots of ocean fish/coral. We even got to see a bunch of baby sea horses, and we saw a sea urchin move. And then there was the robot section. The girls really liked all the cool robots that were there to try out and watch, and they really loved the robot that was programmed to shoot a basketball and try to get it through the hoop. They cheered and got so excited when it actually made a good shot. This picture is of the robot who greeted us as we entered the robot area.
The part that I have always loved going back to see is the model train room. They have this huge room with the biggest model train set I have ever seen. They divided it up into four sections, one for each of the different seasons of the year, and then did the models of important places in Pittsburgh/what it was like in the past when trains were still a main source of transportation and important for different companies in the area. There's a lot of little moving parts, like a couple dancing inside of a house, a rocking chair that rocks, people shoveling, a guy taking a bath in an outdoor tub, and so many more things. It is so neat and the girls loved it, especially when each of them got to blow the train whistle by the conductors seat.
The old baseball stadium
A model of the Frank Lloyd Wright house located near Pittsburgh. This was something we had wanted to see during our visit, but it was a bit of a drive, and we ran out of time.
The fair that they had...my grandparents said that they even remembered some of the rides that they did models of for the display.
They even had a Thomas the Train engine...thought that was really cute!!
The science center was so much fun and I'm so glad that we got to take the girls there and that they got to spend time with their Gigi and Pappy at such a fun place. Hopefully we'll be able to take the girls back there someday. More updates from our trip to come soon!!
