A Surprise Sequel To Our Adventure

In my last post, I shared with you photos from our visit to see Eartha (man, she really was impressive!) Then because I had so much fun and wanted to share the delight with you, I picked up a couple of small souvenirs and offered them up in the form of a giveaway to one lucky reader. The winner of that giveaway is KatieCoffee and she said,"Here in Portland, OR, they set the Guinness record for most number of people wearing sombreros with over 1000 people wearing them on Cinco de Mayo this year. There was also a, "world record attempt for flying lawn chairs." Not sure how that turned out..." Congrats Katie!

After leaving Eartha, we headed further South in Maine to The Portland Children's Museum for a day out with the littles. I was both shocked and thrilled to discover that on their second floor they feature a section that is dedicated to a country from around the world and I was even more delighted to learn that the country that they are featuring right now is also the country that we are learning about, India! 

In a place like this, there are kids running wild. I mean, WILD! So in order to make sure that we didn't lose one of our littles, we split up. Preston was chasing  watching one while I was chasing watching the other. We switched back and forth so that we didn't miss the fun with either of them. For this part of the tour, I was on "Eliana Duty", so sadly, there aren't pictures of Aiden learning about India (I'll explain this further in just a few), but I assure you, he also experienced these fun things. 

The first part that Eliana and I discovered was a little room that had a table with Hindu Gods and Goddess in a puzzle like manner. You could lift the god/ goddess of your choice and read about them. Naturally, I had to read each and every one of them. 

It was ridiculously hot in there as you can tell by El's rosy cheeks and shiny skin. 

There was a small shrine with a mini buddha and a pretty sari, along with some lovely little flowers. There were several books as well, I started to pick them up and look at them, but I couldn't. I just couldn't bring myself to think of all of the India books that I had to turn away from, even though I borrowed so many from the library, as I mentioned in the library post.

The next thing that we discovered was that there were stations spread around the India space that had a little button to push and you could hear how to count in Hindi. 

They also had a small area that was set up like a play kitchen, complete with several spice jars and lots of beautiful saris. Behind a shield of plexiglass, there was a presentation of Indian spices. 

Inside another glass case there were Rajasthani Puppets. 

Right in the center of this section featuring India is a giant globe (clearly, no where near as magnificent as Eartha, but still quite cool). This globe has a button that you push and it begins to blow air so that you can turn spin the globe. There are barcodes on many of the countries and when you spin the globe to line up the bar code with a code reader, a little television comes on and features a child who lives in Maine that is either from the country that you have selected, or has relatives from the country that you've selected (like a parent or grandparent). This was really fun, and while we would have loved to have scanned every single barcode on that globe, there were other kids eagerly awaiting their chance to spin the globe. 

Aiden Spinning the Globe... El Niño Spins The Globe???

If I had known before going to the museum that India would be featured, I would have been sure to bring an extra memory card for my camera, this way, I could have gotten more pictures that included both of my littles in the India "room". I also would have likely not dressed Eliana in her Frida shirt. It seems a little weird to look at pictures of her experiencing India while wearing clothes that feature a Mexican artist, no? 

All in all it was a fun day. Starting with Eartha and moving on the museum. It felt very enriching and the littles were delighted with both adventures.