The Real Arthur

Saturday Dr. J. and I went to the Southern Kentucky Bookfest. First I saw Marc Brown talk. Marc Brown is Arthur’s author. Then I had a picture of me taken with the real Arthur. After that Marc Brown signed a couple of Arthur books for me. We met Jeff Kinney who wrote The Diary of a Wimpy Kid. It’s a bestseller. Then we met Katherine Wilkie who signed a bookmark for me. Merkin read me a book by her about George Rogers Clark. After that I ate lots of popcorn. The Bookfest was good, and I should go again.

Cheekwood . . . Letter of the Week

Wednesday Merkin and I went to the Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art in Nashville. It was a great day to go there, because the sky was very blue! First we walked through the gardens, but not all (we finished that later). We heard some noisy birds in the Botanic Hall. The Herb Garden had ruins of columns from the original state capitol building. Then we went to the art museum. I liked the building and wished it was my house. At one time it was the home of a rich guy from Kentucky. My favorite exhibit was on Faberge. I liked the eggs a lot. He used real gold! After the museum we went on the sculpture trail. My favorites were “Glass Bridge,” “Turtle, Two Hares, Frog and Hawk,” “High-Back Windharp Chairs” and “Crawling Lady Hare” (see picture for this one). Then we went to the Japanese Garden. There were tons of bumble bees. We then went back to where the columns were and saw a plant named Bear’s Breeches. My legs were hurting by the end of the day.

My First Earthquake

During the night there was an earthquake that measured 5.2, but I slept through it. While I was doing math this morning (around 10:20 am) the stove rattled and then the bookcase started shaking. There was also a bitsy rumbling noise. My first earthquake! We went to the USGS Earthquake Center on the internet and answered questions about our experience. It had a magnitude of 4.6. On the map, the red box is the quake I felt. And the big blue box shows the earthquake from last night. I realized what was going on, but I wasn’t scared. I was excited because it was my first earthquake.

DNA in a bottle

Wednesday we went to the Nashville Adventure Science Center for HomesCOOL Day. The theme was Forensics. First I did “Genes in a Bottle.” Dude Boy got some cheek cell DNA and put it in a bottle! It was easier than you might think. Today we looked at it with my microscope. The other session was “Are You Observant?” Merkin and I looked for clues at a crime scene (not a real one). We looked for physical evidence like fingerprints, footprints, hair, and examined the things left behind. We also played at the science center for a couple of hours. It was very, very, very fun!

Spring Break part 3

On the last day of my trip we went to the Frazier International History Museum. I saw different things all over the museum. By the way, did you know you can see famous English battles upstairs like Hastings and Culloden? On the next level down was American History, and we saw the Boone family bible and Kentucky long rifles that used flint. I also liked the special exhibit about the Henrietta Marie, a slave ship that sank. They found different objects on it. At the very bottom floor, there were tons of guns, a room full. I also saw actors playing Lincoln and Douglass debating. The museum was very big. Soon there will be an animated video of the crusades on my blog. Watch for it.

Spring Break part 2

On Wednesday we went to Big Bone Lick State Park. It is called the birthplace of American paleontology. There was a naturalist who took us all over the park. We looked for fossils and he showed us bison. And I got to pet two snakes. The animals came there because there was an enormous salt lick. Some of them got stuck in a bog. They found lots of different fossils at Big Bone Lick. There were mammoths, mastodons, two types of ground sloths, giant bisons, giant musk oxen, and the humongous elk moose. They had life-size recreations of some of them. You can see them in these pictures. After Big Bone Lick we went to a Walmart in Ft. Mitchell to look for fossils. They cut into a hill to build the Walmart and it is here you can find some fossils. We found tons of crinoids, corals, and Merkin found a big nautiloid cephalopod. Check back tomorrow to find out about the Frazier International History Museum.

Spring Break part 1

Note . . . Because of our extended trip, this report will be broken up into several posts.

On Tuesday Merkin, Dr. J and I went to the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Station. We went to the Natural History Museum. First we saw the fossils. We saw mammoths, mastodons (you can tell the difference between mammoths and mastodons by looking at their teeth. The mammoth had the flat teeth of a grazer and the mastodons had the bumpy teeth of a browser), trilobites, crinoids, giant sloths, giant bisons, giant musk oxen, and we saw several different types of rock. There was a cave that you could walk through and explore. There were real bats! There were waterfalls in the cave. And there was an ice tunnel going through a glacier. The tunnel led to the Big Bone Lick exhibit. There was a mammoth dying in a bog. And there was a giant sloth. Close by was a smilodon . . . a saber-toothed cat. That night we stayed at General Butler State Park. Check back tomorrow about our adventures at Big Bone Lick State Park and fossil hunting behind Walmart.
Dude Boy