Ahoy Mateys!

On Thursday, February 17th, the Children’s Museum hosted Awesome Robb’s very first Pirate Adventure! Robb took his young mateys on a journey from here to England, Hungary, and China. Some enthusiastic young pirates volunteered to help Robb overcome obstacles along the way, like finding his pirate flag and searching for treasure!

Here, special helper Rafaila helps Robb by naming some colors….

The children were even lucky enough to meet a special guest - a bunny named “Walk the Plank.”

Awesome Robb has been performing at the Children’s Museum for over five years, introducing new lessons and exciting magic to children of all ages.

“The Museum is one of my favorite places to perform. I always feel like I’m walking into a big room full of old friends. There are always great crowds and a festive atmosphere. It’s like a funhouse for kids!” – Robb

In case you missed Robb’s last performance, you can catch Awesome Robb's next Adventure on March 17^th as he hosts his “Go Green” show. He will use magic, puppetry, and storytelling to teach kids how to reduce, reuse, and recycle to keep our environment clean.

To book a show with Awesome Robb:

Call: 617.818.7484

Visit: http://www.awesomerobb.com/

-Kerri, PR Intern

Dog Days II & BEE a POOP Detective!

It was a zoo at The Museum last week! We had a lot of animal visitors come and teach us a little something about themselves. Of course their owners helped them with their presentations, and we had a great time learning about everything from dog training to poop! Don’t miss our last week of Drop-in Days next week as we wrap things up with Miss Candy’s Petting Zoo and our favorite pal Ruff from FETCH!

Thursday we had our second Dog Days of Summer Drop-in Day. This time around we featured dogs that could do awesome tricks. In the morning Dick Norton, a dog behavioral therapist and dog trainer from Bark Busters, and his dog Douglas taught us how to safely approach a dog. There are a few steps that you need to take if you want to pet a strange dog. First, you need to ask its owner if it’s okay to pet his dog. Second, you need to make your hand into a fist and then let the dog sniff it. Once the dog seems comfortable with you, you can pet the dog under its chin- NOT on top of his head.

After Dick & Douglas’ presentation, we had a spectacular dog show. Australian Shepherds, and a little dog named Spanky, performed all kinds of great tricks for us. Many of the dogs could weave through their owners legs, spin, dance, and bow. Tika, a 7 month old Australian Shepherd, showed us how she says her prayers each night with help from her trainer. Spanky and Wish did a great round of fly ball- check out their skills by watching our video on Facebook! Wish is also an amazing frisbee player and made some great snags! After their performances, they did meet and greets with all of our guests. It was nice to get up close and personal with the celebrities! At the end of the day, we even got to help them groom one of the dogs who needed a good brushing. We had some dog-gone fun with all of our furry guests, and we look forward to seeing them again next summer!

I’d never thought that I would say that, but I am now a poop detective. Crazy, right? Well if you came to the Museum last Friday, then you are now a poop detective too! Before we got the scoop on poop, Channel 7 meteorologist, Chris Lambert, taught us how he calculates the weather. He also answered some great questions from the audience, like “How do they come up with the names for hurricanes?” Answer: The name depends on the part of the world that the hurricane is occurring, but weather people have a list of names that they use over time.

After Chris’ presentation, you could have headed over to the Bristol County Beekeeper’s table to check out the bee hive they had set up. They also had some honey combs so you could see what the bees make. They even had the gear that they have to wear when tending to the bees for us to look at! It was great to have these beekeepers buzzzing around The Wild Place throughout the day!

Finally we were taught all about animal poop through a great presentation from Animal World Experience. There are all different types of poop- it depends on what type of animal it’s coming from. Poop comes in all shapes and sizes, and even how it comes out is different in some animals too! The weirdest way one animal poops was a scorpion! The poop comes out of its tail, and it likes to smear it all of the walls of its cage. GROSS! The best part was that we all got to get really close to the animals that we were learning about. We were big fans of these super poopers!

It was another fun filled week at The Museum! If you love animals, then don’t miss your last chance to see real, lives ones next Thursday during our Miss Candy’s Petting Zoo Drop-in Day!

-Ashley Balerna

Public Relations Intern

Turtles and Alligators and Snakes- Oh my!

Today’s Drop-in-Day had all kinds of animals from the furry to the slimy! Dean from “Curious Creatures” stopped by with his huge collection of these curious creatures! He introduced us to one animal we all know, or have at least smelled- a skunk! But luckily for us this skunk was very nice and we didn’t have to worry about that smell!

After that Dean brought out a cute, furry little chinchilla named Charlie! Dean told us that this kind of chinchilla is found in Peru, South America. Turns out that Charlie is a cousin to the squirrel, but unlike squirrels he is nocturnal. This means that he sleeps during the day and is awake at night! But one of the most interesting (and funny!) things about Charlie and chinchillas is how they take bathes! They don’t use water like us, but dust!

Then we got to meet a turtle and it was big enough for kids to ride (and they got a chance to after the show!)! A cool thing about the turtles is how it’s shell feels. Do you want to know? Touch your fingernails, yes right now! Yup that’s how the turtle’s shell felt! Weird huh?

And then came the snakes, big and small. First we met a Mexican Milk Snake, it was about a foot long and had red, white and black stripes. Dean told us that even though it looked poisonous it really wasn’t, it’s more like a typical garden snake- just very brightly colored!

After the little snake Dean brought out the big one! It was a big yellow snake, called an Albino Burmese Python!! It was long enough so that a whole row could hold it up! It is found in Asia and he told us that there they are as common as garden snakes!! Yikes, I don’t know what I would do if a four foot snake lived in my garden! What about you?

Other cool animals that we got to meet included a hedgehog that was a little shy and stayed all wrapped up like a ball. There was also a tarantula, a big furry spider! Did you know that it’s head and body are all one- so it had legs that come out of it’s head, crazy! In addition to these cool creatures we also got to meet other lizards and some Australian frogs!

Next we met an American alligator but it was only baby so it was about 1 ½ foot long and it was actually loosing its baby teeth! But don’t go near it when it grows up, its teeth are SUPER strong! A cool trick Dean taught us was that if you turn that alligator on it’s back it will go right to sleep. He tried it and it did! Other fun facts about this type of alligator is that it likes to lay in the sun since it’s a reptile and when swimming it uses its tail like a paddle.

All in all it was a great day! And a big thanks goes out to Honest Tea who came and gave out free drinks, perfect for a hot and humid day like today!

Also be sure to check out our last Drop-In-Days of the summer next week when the Children’s Museum meets the Wild West Thursday August 27th and gets a visit from FETCH! on Friday August 28th! Hope to see you all there! Have a great weekend!