Day Tripping

I went on a field trip with Maggie's class today. We had a great time. Most of the school is taking the California Standardized tests this week, so school is pretty dead for the non standard kids. Ms. Taylor, the teacher, planned to take them on public transportation to The California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. As luck would have it, that is only about 6 blocks form here; hence Maggie slept in, skipped the bus trip and we just walked over to meet the other students and the adults assigned to the class at 9:30AM.


The Academy of Sciences is an amazing place (www.calacademy.org),For a few years the place was closed for remodeling/rebuilding. We went through withdrawals while we anxiously awaited the opening of the new one. Now it's bigger and better than ever; there's an aquarium, planetarium, pendulum, rainforest, alligators, snakes, and stuffed wildlife or all types. Right now it's "extreme mammal" month.( I'm not sure if those are mammals who ride mountain bikes or what exactly.) Because we live so close, we always buy a membership. .

With my membership I am allowed to bring in a couple of guests; another person had a membership too, so almost no one had to pay today. That worked out well.

The displays are amazing floor to ceiling tanks. The penguins were especially rambunctious and kept coming right up to the window where Maggie and Juan were standing. There were lots of other kids there too, but three or four penguins were hanging around only these two. Check out the picture. It looks like the kids can touch the penquin, but there's about five inches of glass between them. We were joking that the penguins were interested in the wheelchair and Maggie's communication device because it was something different and interesting for them.

The kids were split into teams and assigned a list of things to find. We knocked off the albino alligator, whale skeleton, and penguins and pendulum in nothing flat. The butterflies required a trek through the rain forest - and you're not allowed to leave until you're checked for hitchhiking butterflies. The rest of the items, seahorses, the tidepool and the anaconda were down in the aquarium.

Maggie's favorite thing were the two interactive simulations of being squeezed by an anaconda and being shocked by an electric eel.

Maybe Maggie is the extreme mammal they're featuring.