Friday Fun

Friday we visited the Lake Oswego Festival of the Arts. It's taking place this weekend at George Rodgers Park, which is a wonderful park to explore with children anytime and really delightful during the festival.  (If you go, plan on parking downtown and taking the free shuttle.)  More info here: http://www.lakewood-center.org/pages/home  The kid's area was full of vendors who mostly offered fun crafts for the kids to do on the spot. We saw Mad Science perform their "Spin, Pop, Boom!" show, which was great fun. I took some pictures of kids who volunteered to do a simple acid/base reaction experiment. They were instructed to pour the contents of their test tubes into the beakers and back off quickly.  Mad Science has lots of classes and summer camps, and lists their public shows on their website:  http://www.madscience.org/locations/portland/

We also saw Hart's Reptile World, Mary Esther Hart's Oregon reptile rescue and animal education business.  http://www.hartsreptileworld.com/index.php We saw them at the Oregon Coast Aquarium for the opening of Swampland, and were really impressed.  The show was great, and afterwards they stuck around to bring animals out for the kids to pet.

Friday evening we took Jasper to see "The Saddest King", a short play for kids at the Theatre In The Grove, in Forest Grove.  The play was written and directed by an adult, but the kids did all the rest themselves.  Parents don't have to fork over big bucks to give their kids this experience, because some wonderful community minded people were able to find funding for it with grant money.  Participation is entirely free.  Jasper found that really inspiring and loved the play.  I wish the play hadn't included so many cliche gender stereotypes (the princess calls her brother a sissy for learning ballet, the prince  calls her a tomboy for learning fencing,  the queen is referred to as a "nag", and ends the play asking to borrow the king's credit card to go shopping) but that didn't ruin it for Jasper.  They will have two more productions this summer, The Music Man and The Wizard of Oz, and tickets are only $3.  Check them out:  http://theatreinthegrove.org/wp/