Winter Seed Catalog Moon
Gabe and I drove through downtown Denver, past Union Station, the 16th Avenue Mall and the REI. Turning left at the REI we found the Aquarium and passed through their parking lot to the Children’s Museum.
Gabe took the opportunity to show his Grandpop around the museum. Since it was Saturday the place was full, parents looking stunned as kids ran from hands on this to feet on that. The first place put nerf balls into a large plastic tube and injected them into a plastic wall where kids could manipulate levers and cranks and chains to make the balls do more things.
Then, over to the train tracks on the waist high (child’s waist) tables. This didn’t grab his attention.
At last, ironically, we ended up in an era filled with containers of milk cartons, toilet paper rolls, plastic berry holders, wood, plastic bottle caps and cardboard boxes of various sizes. I say ironically because this is a place where Dad’s were helping their children construct things based on laminated instructions.
Gabe chose the train. It said, in Spanish, muy dificile. That meant Grandpop would have a challenge helping. So, naturally we sat down and began to build a train. Gabe read the instructions, located the materials and we got quite a long way into it.
We made a boiler, attached it to a piece of wood with a screw, cut out and front for the boiler and attached it with tape. Then we cut up a milk carton for a cab, attached it with a screw and tape, too.
Finally we put brass fasteners through plastic bottle caps (after punching a hole with a screw. The wheels. It took 40 minutes or so and Gabe was on it the whole time. I helped very little, pushing him to read the directions and make his own decisions about materials.
After that we ate lunch and visited, yes, you guessed it, the toy shop. A slinky. That was it. It was in his age group as he said.
