Natural History at Aloha Academy.

Animals that existed in our oceans before dinosaurs walked the earth.

We have been working on building a natural history museum in order to get an idea of how life evolved on earth millions of years before humans walked on earth.  When I first told Keona about this great idea of mine, he wasn’t visibly impressed.  Mostly because he had no idea what natural history was!  Since we’ve been working on these creatures he has grown more and more interested.  I mean with names like Wiwaxia and Hallucigenia who wouldn’t be thrilled.  At first he would only help, but now he is seeing stuff in the book and picking out some that he wants to make himself.  It’s quite fun to see his enthusiasm grow.  We’ve found quite few fun books to read about evolution and the dinosaurs.  Last week we went to D.C. to see the Smithsonian’s version of natural history. While we think they have some pretty cool stuff there, we think ours will be cooler!  We did get to buy a couple of actual trilobite fossils to add to our own museum.  For just a little over $15, we came away with 2 fossils millions of years old.  It’s kind of fun to hold them in our hands.

After we have finished dinosaurs, we’ll work on our Hall of Birds, and the Hall of Mammals.  In the end, this will all culminate with the grand “opening” of our museum and a dinosaur party to end all dinosaur parties!!!

All Aboard!!!!

Finally it has come to the Virginia Zoo.  Not only can we go and see animals, but now we can take a ride on an authentic replica of a steam engine.  Man, it is a beauty!

Here she comes!

Round and round it goes.....

Ding, ding, the bell will ring!

 As you can imagine, Kalani is really excited about this!  We have taken several rides, walked on the track, heard the big shiny bell, and enjoyed touching the train itself.  For 2 bucks a pop, it is not a bad ride and you get to ride through the building of the new exhibit, so you get to watch big machines at work to boot.

A real beauty and I can touch it, too!