Exploring the Perot Museum

The countdown for all parents is on!  You know…that countdown to when our wonderful, darling kids go back to school. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I love having them home, and we have had a lot of fun over the past two weeks playing board games and hanging out once the unpacking was complete!

But as more cold rain fell and the bickering amped up this morning, we knew that, despite the weather, it was time to get out of our pjs and out of the house. Thankfully, I had in hand four tickets to the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, courtesy of a giveaway by Courtney from My Crazy Savings.

It also seemed like everyone else in Dallas had the same idea today! Thankfully, we had arrived early and were given an early entry time for the “2theXtreme – Math Alive!” exhibit. My daughter is a bit of a math geek, so she was really excited about it — my son, well, not so much. “Ugh. Math? Really?”

He would eat his words soon enough.

Wait – there is math involved in rock climbing?

Who knew that trigonometry could be used to improve snowboards? This exhibit offered information from vibration engineer (and snowboard designer) on the natural frequency of materials and how this can affect the speed of snowboards…and then gave visitors a lesson on snowboarding and movement, and how angles can affect speed.

Another favorite was Style Revolutions’s 360-degree photo booth, a la the Oscar’s red carpet. The kids both took a turn in the photo booth, striking a pose and getting a look at their image in the round. (Neat tip – you can have it emailed to you at home.) Oh, and it’s a great lesson on geometry, too.

There were load of other cool hands-on exhibits in the space (on space as well as other cool topics), and be the time we left, my 10-year-old might have been eating his words, although he was seeing the science and maybe not the math….or he just didn’t want to admit it!

We took a quick break for lunch in the cafe, where food was served up quickly and was pretty darn tasty! (Oh, and for us germaphobe mamas? There were hand sanitizer dispensers mounted outside all the exhibit areas, a nice touch particularly when there are so many nasty things in the air – and probably on every button we pushed – at the moment.)

Fully refreshed we headed to the Lamar Hunt Family Sports Hall, where my son quickly hopped in line to have his soccer-ball kicking ability filmed, where he could see it played back in slow motion and compared side-by-side to a pro player.

Very cool!

My daughter was keen to have a race against a T-Rex. She didn’t fare as well as my son did running against the FC Dallas goalkeeper (who beat him by 3 tenths of a second…)  You could also have a go running against Jamaal Charles or a cheetah! (Good luck there…)

The next exhibit hall choice was up to Miss M, and she wanted to know more about the giant “grape jelly” geode that was the first exhibit at the Perot, and from the comments of the parents waiting in line, forever remains a favorite! Even the big guy had to have a go at cranking the wheel that opened up the giant geode.

My daughter is very into “pretty rocks”, so we spent some time in the Gems and Minerals Hall (there was an aquamarine that we both decided would look very pretty on the end of a necklace, haha) while my husband and son headed to the Dynamic Earth Hall to check out the earthquake simulator.

From there, we climbed a flight of stairs to check out the dinosaur exhibit. Now, I’ll admit, as Chicagoans we love our Sue, but the Perot had some dinosaur bones like we’ve never seen before, and we even learned a few things! (Did you know that whales evolved from land mammals? WHOA.)

However, I must confess that after a few days of excessive snacking, sports watching and Yahtzee dice throwing, we were starting to wear out a bit easier than intended, so we headed for the exit – leaving a lot of corners unexplored and ready for the next visit (where I’m sure my daughter will talk us into letting her pick out another bag of polished rocks from the gift shop.)

The “2TheXtreme – Math Alive” exhibit has been extended at the Perot through January 11 so there is still time to check it out!

So tell me: What have you done this winter holiday to shake things up?

A quick shout out of gratitude to Courtney at My Crazy Savings – she blogs about great deals, family fun, has good discount codes in abundance and offers some fun giveaways, too. Go check it out!