Fun at the State Museum!

Saturday we wanted to do something as a family. We drove up to Columbia to the State Museum.

Dad being silly

The special exhibit was Roman Machines.

Hello, Caesar!

There were things you could experiment with.
The battering ram was fun.

The catapult!  Knocking that wall down was so cool!

With both of those, Lon was kind and rebuilt the walls for the next person.

ROME!

Checking out the Tortoise.  Lon thought it was really cool they could do that with their shields. He said it must have been very effective.  Well, they ruled the world for a while.

Just take the picture Mom!

The docent was impressed with Lon, she told him that he should try to build the arch, not many people could do it. This is Lon's first try. By himself.  He did not use all the bricks, so it just went straight across.  BUT it was an arch and it stood up by itself.

Gladiators!

The elevator system from the Coliseum.

Making mosaics.

On to other parts of the museum!

A heat shadow. Lon was having fun making patterns.

Lon ducked into the kaleidoscope and took his infinite picture.

Lon  playing with the different pulleys.

I can not remember what this is called, but it is really fun.  They had white plastic balls you could put in and watch them run.

Like a giant spryograph!

Lon's design.

Looking at the old comic book depictions of ray guns!

Lunch break, even though his face looks different, he did enjoy the quesadilla.  Lunch was not bad.

The mastodon !

Lon pointing all the dinosaurs he knew and their names.   One of the adults looked at me and asked me what school did I teach science at.  Never been mistaken for a science teacher before. History, grade school, but never science.
I told him I did not, and he insisted I must have been a science teacher sometime in  my life.

We moved on from that exhibit to more recent history of South Carolina.

These are big tires!

For easier reading

The Clemson plane

We went to the planetarium show. It was very interesting.
We could not take pictures in the dome.

We went back to see Roman Machines. Lon was having so much tun with them

Mark and Lon rebuilt this one.

I can not remember what this was called.

Lon rebuilt the arch, with all the blocks and it arched this time!

sort of dress up. Lon was not into it this time

Dioramas!  Lon still loves them.

We had a great time at the museum. So much fun going as a family.