Sometimes you just need a day off, and believe it or not kids need a day off too. So I decided we would have a ditch day, and I kept the kids home from school. After we slept in for a little bit we headed to McDonald’s for breakfast, then went to spend the day at The Telus Spark. When we first got there we went to buy our tickets to get in, and the lady asked if we wanted to pay extra to go see the Star Trek exhibit. Of course I couldn’t pass up that opportunity, although I’m probably the only Star Trek fan out of all of us.
We decided to go briefly look around, and then come back to the exhibit after. We went to the main area just as a staff member was preparing a science demonstration. I managed to convince the kids that we should watch the experiment, so while they waited for it to start the kids played with huge blue foam things. They have these huge blue foam type things that kids can play, and build with in the main area it’s a great place for parents to go sit while the kids can continue to play.
Ten minutes went by and they finally started the science experiment, they explained to the kids that it’s important to make sure you wear safety glasses and gloves when you’re doing experiments. That you should do the experiment with a parent or a trusted adult. Then two of the staff members showed us how to make a small cloud, and then how to make a bigger cloud it was super neat to watch.
Once that was done we took the kids to the “older kids area”, the science center has different areas for different age ranges. So if your bringing younger kids around 3-4, you’ll probably want to stick to the younger kid areas. Upstairs they have an older kid area where you can take stuff apart and rebuild it, but I’ve only been up there a handful of times since my kids aren’t really old enough to be into that kind of stuff yet.
We usually stick to the main floor, it’s got the older kids area that teaches about sound, electricity, gears, energy, gravity etc. They have this little area where you can dance, but your really supposed to jump to music until you reach a certain level of energy watts on the screen. I thought that it would be Zaden’s favorite thing to do, since he’s always on the go jumping and moving. However after jumping a couple of minutes he got bored, and Emilee got “tired” leaving Keera to jump on her own.
Once we were done in the older kid area, I told the kids that I wanted to go check out the exhibit. We had to go to the other side of the science center, and we got someone to rip our tickets and they gave us each a white watch to wear. She then explained that around the corner, they had monitor where I could enter an email address and link it to the watches so while we interacted with stuff around the exhibit once we were done they could email the results.
It only took me a few minutes to get everyone’s watches synced up to my email, that includes trying to stop the kids from trying to sync their watches onto a different monitor! Then we were ready to go start the exhibit, you start by walking down a hallway where they’ve got Star Trek facts about the series over the years up on the wall. When you get to the end of the hall, your greeted by a talking woman on a screen welcoming you to the Starfleet experience.
Once you go around another corner, you enter into a room with a Klingon laying on a table. If you want to do the interactive stuff, you scan your watch then follow the instructions. Here we had to scan a Klingon, and diagnose his wounds and how to treat them. The wound and diagnoses questions were different, each time that we scanned a different watch. I thought that was pretty cool, since we all had to think instead of the kids just responding the same thing over and over again.
The kids were interested in everything, but they were keen on moving at a faster pace than I was. I wanted to really look around, the kids grandpa and one of the staff distracted the kids with a “shooting game.” One at a time they had to sync their watches and shoot objects that were projected onto the wall using a “Phaser”, Zaden was especially excited about this particular activity. It was a score out of 50, and he got 46. The girls went next, and I wasn’t paying attention. I wasn’t planning on doing it, purely because I didn’t want to do worse than my 5 year-old son lol but the lady insisted I try it. I got 48 out of 50 and I realized I didn’t care about my score, I’m happy the staff member insisted I do it!
They had set up an area where you could take a selfie of yourself, and then your picture shows up on a monitor screen and you can customize your appearance including skin tone. The kids really enjoyed that, we stuck around there for a good ten minutes.
Once we finished there the kids went and found a transporter. You go stand near a green screen and then press a button and it transports your image to another location. The kids thought that was awesome, they must have pressed that button over a dozen times. 
There was so many different rooms with different things to see, and we managed to find Starship Bridge. I’m impressed with the detail, each chair had a different computer monitor so that you could interact based on that person’s position. Keera and Zaden each took turns in the Captains chair, Emilee was more interested in looking around and attempting to play games on the monitors. 
It took us over an hour to go through the Star Trek exhibit, and the exit was thoughtfully planned out by staff so that we had to exit through the gift shop. Sneaky sneaky, although the only one interested in buying anything was my nerdy butt but I stood strong and we went to grab a “snack” instead.
I didn’t notice until now today, but they relocated the snack area from upstairs to downstairs. We bought the kids a couple of bags of chips, and some juice and pop. Once everyone was done Keera went with her grandpa to watch a movie about space. We thought about us all going but the movie was supposed to be an hour-long, and I wasn’t sure that Zaden and Emilee would sit still long enough.
Instead I took Emilee and Zaden to play in the water/sand/sound area, they got to play around and after a half hour I decided we’d go to the “little kid” area of the science center. They’ve got a little reading nook, a small play structure, building blocks, magnets, puppet area, small rock climbing area, more water play stuff, a piano that plays noise with bubbles. Also they’ve got another smaller enclosed area for babies, you can see a lot of parents in there with their babies but I’ve never been inside lol.
This section of the science center might be aimed to younger kids, but it’s one of my favorite parts of the science center. They have so many different things, it’s not just one activity there’s something for everyone even the parents. On a hilarious note, I didn’t know that we had to pay for parking when we got there. So when it came time to leave I went to the parking lot machine (by the doors), and I selected the stub to be for the whole day. It ended up costing us just over 3$ dollars, and we left the parking lot as soon as we paid lol.