Ontario Science Center

We used our COSI membership to go visit the Ontario Science Center. That place is huge! And, it is built on the side of a hill, so when you go in on the first level, the rest of the center is below you. I didn't realize that, so I was surprised when we got into the elevator to go to the 6th floor and we went down. Then I thought about it, and realized that the building I saw from the front couldn't have been more than two stories tall...and it all made sense...with the help of a diagram I found on the map.

We didn't see even a fraction of the center during our visit. But we did see some pretty cool stuff.

We were very excited to discover a display of one of the robotic arms used on the Space Shuttles.

Look up!

Another fabulous find in the Space exhibit area was a rocket chair that we could pilot, just like astronauts use on the moon.



The rocket chair was so much fun that we did it a couple of times each. I had to help Lex, though, because he was a little bit too small to do it by himself.


The boys really liked this black hole exhibit, and we watched little silver balls spin around and around and around before being sucked into the vortex for the better part of half an hour.

Connor makes a handsome astronaut!

There was also a huge perpetual motion ball contraption that we watched for a really long time. It is so big that I didn't get the whole thing into the picture. It was fabulous, and included musical instruments that the balls hit, bells, trampolines, and all sorts of other neat stuff.

We caught the IMAX Hubble show (narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio to boot) in their IMAX Dome theater. The show was fabulous, and I really loved learning about the history of the Hubble Space Telescope. There was some great footage of space shuttle launches, which Connor really liked. And with the IMAX screen being stretched into a dome shape, he asked me if we were moving several times during the show. It was fabulous! Lex, of course, napped through it.

The only other exhibit area that we explored was the Kidspark, and we only did about half of that one. That room was a ton of fun for us!

One of my favorite things about their water table area was a hand dryer right next to it for the kids to use when they got too wet. (I really think that COSI should install some hand dryers near their water tables in Little KidSpace.)

See how great this is?

One thing the boys love? Pirates!

Another thing Connor loves? Mazes!
And here was one big enough for him to walk through.
(I need to remember to do this type of thing on our driveway with sidewalk chalk on a long afternoon this summer.)

Look how much fun!

This day was so much fun. We had a really great time, and I think that the Ontario Science Center was really nice, even though we only saw a small fraction of it.