The bones of a massive blue whale that died 20 years ago off Prince Edward Island are being laid bare in a unique project to preserve one of the largest creatures ever to live on Earth.Scientists and a small army of diggers began the grim work Saturday of pulling apart the remains of a 27-metre-long female blue whale in preparation for transport to a new museum in British Columbia where she will be the star attraction.

Although the whale was a queen of the seas during her lifetime, she is now a large jigsaw puzzle as her bones are dissected and numbered for restoration once they arrive in B.C.

The atmosphere at the dig site near Tignish in western Prince Edward island is tinged with excitement and with the nauseating odour of rotting flesh.

Project leader Andrew Trites of the University of British Columbia said no one predicted so much of the whale would remain after two decades of burial, and it is making the task of separating the bones more difficult and much smellier.

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Today, my son’s class went on a field trip to a museum. On the way there, we rode in a fancy bus and watched videos of Scholastic’s The Magic School Busâ„¢.

Now, if you’ve never met Ms. Frizzle, the wild and wonderful teacher that leads the class on these magical science adventures, you’re in for a treat. Her magic school bus is an amazing machine that can transport students to the far reaches of outer space, inside the human body, or down an ant hill. Along the way, her young pupils make discoveries about their surroundings and learn about science.

At the end of each video, there’s a mock call-in session where kids ask questions of the producers like, Could this really happen? This is followed by a brief explanation of which facts are true and which ones were stretched for the sake of a good story.

The Magic School Busâ„¢ website includes Science Fun Activities to try after watching the videos, fun online games and this week’s experiment. In addition to the videos, there are over 40 The Magic School Busâ„¢ books in print, with most geared to the 6-9 year-old set.

Check them out! Or, as Ms. Frizzle would say,

Wahoo! Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy!

Two weekends ago, Jason and I traveled to KC to see the Orioles take on the Royals. On Friday, we got to see American Idol Contestant, David Cook, throw out the first pitch and sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”. (Easier to take pics on the jumbo tron than on the field…looks too teeny tiny.)
We also went to the American Jazz Museum and the Negro Leagues Museum. The Negro Leagues Museum was self guided and had a ton of artifacts. I learned a lot!
We ate plenty of KC BBQ! We went to the big three: Arthur Bryant’s, Jack Stacks and Gates. All were different and all were yummy! Gates had a stand at the ball park and served seasoned chips-sort of like crab chips, but the seasoning was HOT! (Those were my favorites!)

We also went to the Hallmark Visitor’s Center, the College Basketball experience (Jason and I were never players and never will be!), the Truman Library (my first presidential library!) and the World War I Memorial and Museum. The WWI Museum was excellent-had multiple , artifacts, hands on activities, actual trenches and many videos to see. The best part for me was walking over the glass bridge looking down on all the red poppies. Each poppy represented a specific number of deaths in WWI. Amazing.
(The museum is the -sort of like the museum under the St. Louis Arch, but more like the Civil War Museum in Madrid, Spain. The tower has been in KC since not long after the war and one can go up in it-elevator ride then 45 steps to climb.)

We enjoyed our trip-there was a lot to do, but not too much. Even though the city wasn’t busy on the weekend, it wasn’t like Cleveland where the carpet got rolled up at 5pm Friday and laid back down again at 9am Monday.