My son (the middle son, the filmmaker) went on a field trip last week with his class to the Rutgers Agricultural Museum in New Brunswick. Here is an old-fashioned firetruck that he photographed. (I didn’t go on the trip; he took his own camera).
Part of the reason for the trip was the boys have been studying the 39 Melachot, the 39 acts of work that a Jew is not allowed to do on the Sabbath. All of these Melachot are agriculturally-based, so their teacher used the museum as a way to show them threshing, winnowing, grinding sheaves (I have no idea what those are; I took those words off Wikipedia). Each boy had been assigned one Melacha to study in detail.
My son’s Melacha was weaving. He had already presented to the class, and his teacher told me later that he gave my son weaving because it was a more difficult one, but he knew my son could handle it. He did an origami basket project with his class. Yes, I am proud of him!
For more posts with a little or a lot of red:
Do you like zoos?
My husband wanted to go somewhere. My daughter wanted to go: first to the beach. Then to an amusement park. Then to a zoo. I liked the beach idea; I started thinking about Ocean Grove. Well, somehow we ended up at the zoo. Turtle Back Zoo in Essex County. I did suggest Popcorn Zoo, which saves animals. At least at that zoo there is a reason for the animals being behind cages. But my husband argued that it’s a longer drive. And Turtle Back does have the train and carousel.
Do you have mixed feelings about gawking at a bunch of animals in a cage?
First, we have to wait in line. So then my husband thinks out loud about how if we had gone to Popcorn Zoo, maybe we wouldn’t have had to wait in line?
Finally, we are in the zoo. After looking at a little fountain, finding the restrooms, buying my daughter a Chex mix snack in a vending machine, we then look at some animals.
Here’s one. I think it’s a bison (according to Victor, see comments, this is Highland Cattle):
We stop looking at animals for a bit, because we’ve come upon: the CAROUSEL! Much more fun to ride on a large plastic leopard that goes up and down:
As my husband and daughter examine a few more animals behind bars, I examine people:
Here are two Central New Jersey moms:
I spot a cute guy. He deserves his own photo:
Here’s how my daughter lets us know that she’s had enough looking at bears from the Ural Mountains and chickens and would like to go on the train:
We find the area for the train, and what do we need to do but wait. I people watch:
Finally, we are on the train. My husband figures if we had to pay for the train, like we did for the carousel (the carousel costs $2/ride), the line would have been shorter. The train takes us on a short ride through the woods, and we see: A lake. Some trees.
After our train ride we gawk at some orange fish:
After examining some endangered amphibians of New Jersey and enjoying the company of some otters, I spot a zoo person holding 2 dead rabbits. “Ew,” I say, “what are those for?” They’re going to feed them to the alligator, my husband tells me. And sure enough, there are all these people standing around the alligator cage watching the alligator chomping away. My husband and I agree this is a bit of a tacky activity.
At left is the baby alligator we saw moments later.
My daughter agreed to go on a pony ride, so that was the next activity. We also saw a cage that supposedly held a groundhog. I couldn’t see the groundhog, but the hole under the little hut in the cage looked suspiciously like the hole under our garage.
Oh, by the way, our neighbors down the block have now caught 11 groundhogs (some were babies) and let them go in Johnson Park.
The zoo has sculptures all around, mostly of animals, but this one is of a boy and a girl:
My daughter took that photo herself. Aren’t digital cameras great for teaching kids?
The best part was photographing the bear.
And this is by far the longest photo essay I’ve ever written.
It’s a Sunday afternoon in Central New Jersey. It would be nice to visit the Guggenheim, but it’s a bit far. We’ve been to the Metropolitan; that’s also a full day trip. I used to visit the MFA when I was a student. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is my favorite in Boston. I’ve been to the Louvre. Years ago I enjoyed wonderful art at the Tel Aviv Museum. But if you want an art trip that’s five minutes from Highland Park, you go to:
A few weeks ago my daughter, her friend and I went to Family Day at the Zimmerli.
The event was free; balloons floated in front of the stained glass window. There were guards stationed in every room of the museum. All the guards were nice to the children, explaining sweetly that the children should not touch the art (this was not our experience at the Princeton Art Museum, which seems much less interested in having children in their building, or the Newark Museum, in which a guard once told my son he could not sit and draw the paintings. Maybe if I write this on a blog post someone at one of those museums will read it and try to be more kid-friendly?).
Activities included face painting, a scavenger hunt, a dance performance, an art activity, and storytelling.
My daughter and her friend waited in the bus stop sculpture by George Segal to get their faces painted. George Segal, known for his life-size human figures, also did a sculpture called The Holocaust, which is in the Jewish Museum in New York and in a park in San Francisco.
We worked on the Family Day scavenger hunt, searching for details in paintings.
As our grand finale event, we listened to story told by Peninah Schram, who was introduced as a “world-reknowned storyteller.” Peninah enjoyed having her picture taken with the girls (a third friend joined us):
Peninah began her story with: “Shalom Aleichem.” We were then supposed to yell back: “Aleichem Shalom!” The audience was a mix of Orthodox Jews, Asian Americans, Caucasian Americans, and at least one Muslim family (one could tell by the head scarf and pants)–typical Central New Jersey audience.
The story was about three brothers and a magic pomegranate. Peninah encouraged audience participation; when she talked about a shuk, the children were asked, “And what do you think was being sold in the market?” When she asked how many seeds does a pomegranate have, I whispered to the girls: “613”, so they happily yelled out “613!”, and Peninah explained how a pomegranate is reported to have 613 seeds, like the number of mitzvot in the Torah. (Aside: years ago, my brother and I counted the seeds in a pomegranate, and we found way more than 613 seeds. When I told my teacher, he responded: “but was it a pomegranate grown in Israel?”)
We bought a copy of the book, The Magic Pomegranate. I see we got a good price; we only paid $15 for the book at the museum.
On the way out, the girls got prizes for their participation in the scavenger hunt. One prize was a kite, so we ended the afternoon with a bit of kite flying.
Three kids. One day trip. Where do you want go?
Eldest: Nowhere.
Middle: NOT to a zoo.
Youngest: To a zoo! Someplace with animals.
In the end, we went to Sandy Hook, at the top of the Jersey Shore. Sandy Hook has beautiful beaches, dunes, rocks, waves. Eldest Son stayed home, as he preferred, and tended to the homestead (he’s a teenager, he’s allowed).
We took one of my son’s friends.
The sky was a lovely blue, and the weather warm enough, considering it was mid-April.
The kids had a great time, climbing the rocks and playing in the sand.
I tried to get a little artsy with my photos.
There’s a lighthouse at the end of Sandy Hook, and there’s another lighthouse called Twin Lights that’s on the road on the way home from Sandy Hook. My kids opted out of going to the lighthouses today, but in the past we’ve gone to both. The Twin Lights Historic Site is a good place to visit if you were planning to go to the beach, but it ends up raining.
What do you do when your kids disagree? Do you just take them where you want to go?
