Painting with Fruit and Astronomy Day

College of the Canyons held it's annual Kid's Day event today.  While I think my 5 and 8 year old girls are getting a little too old to participate, they always find something to keep them entertained.  As we were walking along the booths, we started to smell something next to us.  It was like there was a Starbucks or bakery a few feet away.  I think the booth was advertising a preschool.  The activity was to mash up different kinds of fruit such as blueberries, strawberries, pomegranates and some others to use as paint.   The fruit were in mortars and the kids used a pestle to mash it up.  Once the fruit was all mashed up, they were given a scrap fabric and a paintbrush to paint their masterpiece. 

In the same booth was what looked like a vintage coffee grinder and coffee spread all over the blanket.   Our girls didn't participate in that activity; but  other kids seemed to enjoy grinding up their own coffee beans.  The smell of the coffee, all the fruit and some shade of that booth, kept it inviting.

After about an hour of kid's play, we went to the local library for their Astronomy day .  We got there at the time they were making telescopes from a kit.  The girls each made a telescope brought to us by Santa Clarita's local Astronomy Club.  The girls were were eager to try it out later in the evening when we went back for stargazing.  After they made telescopes, we watched a presentation on TMT, Thirty Meter Telescope.  It was very interesting to see how many people and how much time goes into building this thirty meter telescope.  Construction began in Mauna Kea, Hawaii just this month after about 20 years of planning.  I believe it will take about 10 years to complete.

After the TMT presentation, we did an astronomy scavenger hunt within the library which helped teach us some interesting facts about our solar system.  We got to also view the sun through a solar telescope.

This is the telescope we viewed the moon from.
Later in the evening we grabbed our homemade telescopes and came back for some stargazing.  We got to see the moon and it's many craters!  We also got to see Jupiter and three of it's 67 moons!  We also got to see Saturn! It was fascinating to actually see the rings around Saturn.