CD Peas

We grew these peas inside an old CD case so we could take a good look at the germination process and see the plant structure clearly.

Canberra - Reptile Sanctuary

To finish off our trip to Canberra we visited the Reptile Sanctuary. It's quite small and a little pricey to get in but you do get to touch a few cool lizards. We are just about to start studying the different animal groups, starting with reptiles, so I though why not visit?

Canberra - Australian War Memorial

Today we went to the Australian War Memorial and the fantastic free museum beneath it. I don't know how many war related objects it holds but it must be hundreds of thousands; from tiny medals to huge aeroplanes. There's so much to see including many dioramas, films, vehicles, uniforms and weapons that we barely scratched the surface of the collection despite spending a whole morning there.

Here are just some of our favourite things.

One of hundreds of dioramas. 

R flies a helicopter

R in the trenches

L drives a submarine

Canberra - Questacon

No trip to Canberra would be complete without a visit to Questacon, the national science centre. This place has hundreds of hands on science displays and runs shows through the day. As luck would have it, they had a show on about the formation of mummies which tied in well with what we have learnt about in history recently. We also saw the music show and the taste show.

Here are some highlights of our day:

Water power in Mini Q

Under water in Mini Q

Playing vets

Playing vets

The kids dancing. 

Canberra - NASA Deep Space Communication Complex

To the south of Canberra is NASA's Deep Space Communication Complex with its own visitors centre. We decided to take a look.

We also watched a film to find out about the SKA (square kilometre array) telescope which might be built in the centre of Australia. This thing will be massive!

Canberra - Tidbinbilla

On our second day in Canberra we headed south of the city to Tidbinbilla. This is part of the Australian Alps national park and we hoped to do some bush walks and get a view of some native wildlife. We weren't disappointed, with kangaroos, emus, a snake, koala, turtles, birds, lizards, butterflies, and possibly a platypus (it was a bit quick to be sure!). Here are some pictures from the day:

See like an eagle at the visitors centre.

A stuffed glider

Aboriginal rock shelter

Canberra - National Museum of Australia

We headed down to Canberra, the capital of Australia, for a few days. I especially wanted to see the Travelling The Silk Road exhibition at the National Museum of Australia. Apart from being visually stunning (no photography allowed of course - grrr), the exhibition relates to our history curriculum as we are about to study how silk was made in ancient China.

The museum has plenty of other displays of interest. Some of our favourite objects are pictured below.

Painted turtle shell in the Aborigional gallery

Convicts!

In addition to the regular displays the Kspace gallery allows you to design a futuristic building and then see it come to life in a 3D  city. great fun!