Very Hungry Caterpillars

We spent one (of the many) rainy days last week at the Eric Carle Museum. The boys had fun, but it's pretty small and they mostly enjoyed eating lunch out of a vending machine (so much for the "Cafe" they advertize on their website!), the one dollar coins that the change machine doled out for my lone 20-dollar bill and the art studio where they spent an hour (literally) immersed in glue and odd recycled parts. I thought the art gallery was pretty neat as it had not only Eric Carle's original works but a few other artists as well. My sentimental favorites were the drawings by Virginia Lee Burton who wrote Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel which was a VERY oldie but goodie even when I was young. On the top right you can see a painting showing a butterfly mommy reading The Very Hungry Kid to her little pupa baby. The kids got a kick out of that and we had long discussions about caterpillar maturation... something Colin weighed in on as the resident expert since his classroom butterflies had just undergone metamorphosis the week before. Eamon mostly enjoyed the fact that I let him loose with endless bottles of glue and scissors that were actually sharp! Liam really impressed me with his multi-towered creation and he very much enjoys building with ANY medium available, including ribbon, milk bottle tabs and miscellaneous scraps of fabric.