Days Out...

Jodrell Bank, Cheshire

Yesterday I went to Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre in Macclesfield with Aum, a couple of other mums and six other children (yes, six!). It isn't technically his school holidays yet, but his parents thought he'd be OK to miss a day with him only being five, especially as it was partly to learn anyway!

We got a lift with one of the other mums, and arrived at about half past ten. We began by going around the first exhibition, all about satellites and the planets. There was a moving model of all the planets and their moons in orbit which was interesting. Next we went to look at Lovell's satellite, the largest in the UK, and had a go at the whispering disks - big concave metal sheets that you could whisper into at one side of a field and hear from the other side in the matching disk! The kids also had a little quiz to fill out which kept them occupied until half past eleven when we were booked into the Science and Aliens talk.

The talk lasted for about half an hour, and included a few interesting experiments to show the children what might happen if there was no gravity, or if they lived somewhere very cold. The guy doing the talk also made some goo to demonstrate what aliens might be made out of, and used glycerine to make some test tubes become invisible. The children were all really good during the demonstration, which I was grateful of as they had been rather boisterous up until then!

Afterwards we went into the experimentation section where there were lots of interactive exhibits that the children could mess around with, and then we went to the restaurant for our lunch. It was a lovely place, not like the usual food sheds you get at attractions. I had homemade carrot and coriander soup with wholemeal bread which was delicious, and the children had sausage, chips and beans or cheesy pasta, which was all organic and looked gorgeous.

Whilst us adults finished our drinks and food the children had a run around, and then we wandered over to the adventure playground, which had some unusual structures in it; I think they had more fun on them than in the actual discovery centre! We left at around 3pm as the other mums had other children to pick up from school, and Aum was shattered after such a busy and intellectually challenging day!