Bishop Museum: not the father of the ward's museum, but the husband of a Princess

Bishop was the last name of the man who married that last living relative of King Kamehameha.  This is a picture of our kids picking his nose!! The land the museum was on was owned by the Bishop family and with a bit of their royal inheritance they made the museum.

I needed to practice driving the suburban to town, before Randy and Jillyn come, because Kyle would be at school.  This, unbeknownst to me was baptism by fire.  I had to take 4 different freeways to get to this museum, smack dab in the middle of everything.

This was like every kind of museum you can think of, all in one.  Our first stop was the planetarium.  We watched a show about the solar system and learned a very silly song about the phases of the moon.  We also learned about global warming....very informative ;)




 Then we rode some large geese.  All of the buildings in the background are part of the museum.

 Our favorite museum was the science discovery building. These were experiments with air, the wall was made of tiny metal disks that moved easily with the changing air pressure.

This was a very unslippery slide.  I think it was supposed to represent the flow of lava.


Matty was in a cave of glowing neon creatures,  and lava.
Then you go upstairs to see the top of a volcano spewing steam.  It was hot too, and then we figured out why.

 They were making actual lava in the basement!!  We got to see a show about how lava works and how the islands were formed and feel pieces of the different kinds of lava.

he poured lava out of a big cauldron.  It was about 4000 degrees and as soon as it hit the metal ramp on the floor it turned black and hardened.  After about 5 minutes it broke up into pieces.  She said even though it was black and looked dry, it was still hot enough to start a fire.

The next building was a huge 3 story that looked like a library.  It was dedicated to Hawaiian history.  It had hands on things for the kids and it had life size models of animals  hanging in the middle.




Those are my kids hanging out behind the shark.  The back side of the whale was it's insides.  It's skeletal system and innards...
cool.

 We also got a hula demonstration/lesson.  She taught us a sitting dance but also taught us the history and about the different instruments and then let the kids try.



The boys weren't interested in hula, so they stayed in the guitar museum we found.  This building had rotating displays and the one that was there right now was completely dedicated to guitars, and guitar history and all the different types of guitars.  This is G with the world record holder for biggest electric guitar in the world.

Of course they had a lot of ukuleles as well and a place to design your own ukes that was a hit.

I felt like I was a home school mom today, so proud of myself for sneaking some education into our vacation!