Scienceworks ground up exhibition

As teachers, Andy and I both have free memberships to the Melbourne Museum, which also includes
entry to both Scienceworks and The Immigration Museum. We regularly visit the Melbourne Museum,
it has a fabulous children’s area and is very easy for us to get to from our place in Brunswick. We haven’t
really taken advantage of visiting the other two museums though. We visited Scienceworks once before,
in our pre-Ella days, but haven’t bothered since she was born as most of the exhibitions are geared
towards older children. However a few months ago they opened a brand new permanent exhibition for
children under 5 called Ground Up: Building Big Ideas, Together so we decided to check it out.

The day we went was pretty busy, it was the week between Christmas and New Year, so many people
were still on holiday. Regardless, Ella had a great time checking out the STEM-themed exhibition. Some
highlights were:

A wind-tunnel, where kids could put together flying contraptions made of felt and watch them fly up the
tunnel and then be spit out the other end:

A wall of light up switches. Ella loves turning the lights on and off in our house so this was a big hit:

Wall spinners with various materials in them:

3D puzzles and building blocks:

Giant blue car wash spinners that can be turned with cranks:

Ella had a fabulous time exploring and as a maths teacher I was pretty happy with all the ‘learning’ going
on. Once we were done with the Ground Up exhibition we went outside to eat some lunch. One of my
goals this year is to pack a lunch to take to places like this so that we don't spend a fortune in overpriced
cafés with sub-par food. I had a quick look in the café at Scienceworks and I can tell you, this was
certainly the case here! (The café at the Melbourne Museum is actually pretty good though.) Anyway, I
did pack a lunch for this outing and we even managed to distract Ella from the ice lollies she saw the
other kids eating, so it turned out to be a pretty cheap day for us!

Outside the main building there is a garden with 3 different playgrounds and lots of space to run around.
We thought we might explore more of Scienceworks after lunch, but Ella was getting tired and cranky so
we took her home for her nap.

Unfortunately Scienceworks is not located particularly close to us, it’s on the south-west side of the city
and about a 25-30 minute drive. But it kept Ella amused and we didn’t even scratch the surface of areas
to explore, plus entry is free with our membership, so we will definitely be back for another visit soon.