AJ and Louis at the Conservatory

I am very behind, so this was several weeks ago, but Elizabeth was born, so less than 2 mo ago. We went to the Garfield Park Conservatory on a Monday with my mom and my friend Sam + her son Louis, and her baby boy Axel. On Mondays they always have a project and storytime in the kids area, so that's always a popular day for us to head over there.

This particular day the project was to make a "Wish Stick". It was basically a stick that the kids got to decorate with yarn, pipe cleaners, sequins, beads, etc. AJ really liked making his (but since he's still young to grasp the concept of magic and wishes, he was not so into the stick afterward when I told him hitting things with it was out of the question. Hahaha.) Here he is wrapping a beaded pipe cleaner around his stick.

There are also toys, water bottles the kids can use to mist the plants, a tube slide, etc., so it's a pretty fun stop for the kids, but there is usually also a dirt table where they can dig for plastic bugs and stuff. This day, however, there were sand tables instead! I thought this was great, since it's a lot easier to get sand to fall off of AJ than to get him to do a good job washing his hands after playing in the dirt. I think he thought the change was cool too!

Here is another video of AJ and Louis running around in the huge yard/garden out back behind the Conservatory after we finished our lunches. It's a great place to let them burn off some steam, as you can see! They also liked when they would see the Green Line El trains go by, and enjoyed looking for fish and turtles in the pond.