Museum of the Great Plains

Well, between sickness, appointments, and other family stuff. Our weekly field trips have been put on hiatus. So I thought I'd share a field trip from earlier this spring :)

Museum of the Great Plains in Lawton, OK. Sometimes, when you go to the lesser known museums... no, every time you go to a lesser known museum you should go with an open mind. I try to do this and have still walked about from some thinking... omg, hand sanitizer, HAND SANITIZER!

This place, though... this place was wonderful. I was beyond pleasantly surprised with this museum. I honestly wish this place were closer to OKC. It would be a fantastic addition to our normal museum rounds.

The entire lower floor is dedicated to both native and frontier cultural history of Oklahoma. I will admit playing with bison bones was the only thing the girls truly enjoyed downstairs, but let's face it true history museums aren't that big with the under 7 crowd. Then we came to the traveling exhibit that takes turns at all the museums in the Oklahoma Museum Network.

Playing with weights and circuits.... and I may have had a little too much fun with the light board.... At this point I think we'd been there an hour. Then, we went upstairs....

There were all kinds of hands on activities. Tube and ball sets, a large foam network to build with, popsicle stick building (that boat, we were told, had been built the weekend before by a young teenager), float a handmade parachute, and build a robot. Tamarin and Lemur went nuts over building their own robots. It was fantastic.

We spent another hour up here and honestly would have stayed longer had Capuchin not had enough of being kept away from the stairs and mama was thoroughly tired of fighting her.

Outside there is a fort (a replica of a real one that had been nearby), a one room school house (It was locked the day we went cause it was cold and rainy), and a train with station (also locked, unfortunately).

The picture is of one watch tower. There were a few rooms you could enter as well as the main building in the center where the actors in full frontier dress were bashfully chowing on pizza and soda. They said normally they have a fire outside, eating authentic food and are a bit more in character, but the weather *shrug*

It was a great day overall. Two and a half hours and, like I said, we would have stayed longer had Capuchin not had enough. Definitely worth the drive :)

Birthdays

We wrapped up our school year this week. Not much to report on that front. No big event, just the first week of our summer field trips as celebration. I've been using a lot more paperwork and less pinterest so nothing really interesting to post school wise, but I thought I'd fill in a few gaps from the last few months starting with birthdays!

Lemur's Frozen party (because don't we all know someone doing a Frozen party this year :p )

Fortunately for me this was right after Christmas so I picked up the snow fluff, snowmen, and other decorations cheap, cheap, cheap.

The one high dollar item I picked up was this:

And were they ever worth it. My sister found them at the hallmark store for a little bit cheaper than what they are going for on Amazon. The kids had so much fun playing with these before, during and after the party.

I got the recipe for the candy glass (ice shards) off Martha Stewart, but apparently they've removed the recipe. This one is pretty close if memory serves.

Howler's Mermaid Party -

Believe it or not almost everything on these tables came from the dollar store, the shells, the net, the streamers, the utensils.

I got the foam crowns and jewels off Amazon.

And after struggling with Rapunzel's tower last year I opted for plastic this year. I got lucky again and found the kit on sale at a local craft shop, but here's the link for Amazon. It was a lot easier to do than I expected... once I got the edible part to cooperate! 

Never underestimate the dollar store! The streamers, shells, and necklaces were the biggest hit of the party... oh, and the fish.... Little cousins had fun terrorizing the goldfish :) Not from the dollar store, but pretty cheap anyway.