first outing of the summer!

This post is part of Cathy's Wednesday Adventure Tours Express. Click on the picture to go to her blog A Bit of the Blarney and enjoy other fun adventures.



On Saturday the Dallas Museum of Art celebrated Autism Awareness Day!

To celebrate they opened 2 hours early for families of children on the spectrum to enjoy a FREE day of fun activities at the museum. In addition to the special activities planned each family was invited to stay after the exhibits opened and enjoy the rest of the museum and we also received a family pass to come again. All for the (discounted) price of parking, $5. It was truly a fun and exciting trip for my Hooligan Clan.

The theme this year was Movement.

Here are my mom and kids posing with Arturo, the museum mascot at the paper sculpture station. Sonshine drew a rendition of the large totem pole that's next to the entrance.

This area talked about spatial relations in art and the kids were given a clipboard with pictures to finish.

This area had a lot of fun places to explore:

Lego walls,

magnetic shapes,

fun walls!!

adding your touches to famous art.

Then we headed out to the courtyard where there were several fun things set up.

Like this water painting set. The "canvas" is some kind of grey material that turns black when wet so they could "paint" with water, then when it dried start all over! It was a big hit with 2 of my kids......who wants to guess which two??

Next the boys found the sailing car races....

Sugars, however was working hard on her masterpiece.....

There's Subvet helping Sonshine put an index card sail on his car

Then you wait for the wind to blow....

Once the breeze picks up, the race is on!!

Undeterred by wind, sail races or hula hoops she's still painting...

Quite the artiste!

Next it was time for an interactive music performance by a Music Therapist. This was a lot of fun! So much fun I didn't remember to take pictures till the end!

We visited "Arturo's Nest" which is a play room for the 4 and under crowd.....not that my kids are ever deterred by age limits!!

Then we headed over to the obstacle course to burn off the last bit of steam.

We zigzagged, hopscotched, threw bean bags, jumped up the wall, and crawled through the tunnel!

By the time the regular museum opened Mightymom (who'd worked all night the night before) was bushed and called it quits. We'll have to go back at another time (with our family pass! thanks) to enjoy the exhibits....

Guess I wasn't the only one worn out when we left.....

I'm always impressed when a company will do special things like this for our special kids and especially when they make them free. Subvet and I would never have attempted to take our 2 Autistic boys and Miss Prissy to the Art Museum, a place where noise and exuberance are generally discouraged. We are grateful to the Dallas Art Museum for allowing us this opportunity to introduce our kids to art in this fun and totally appropriate manner! The volunteers and security staff at the museum were fantastic keeping the kids reminded of what they could and couldn't touch in a caring and friendly way. The set up and execution of the different areas was very well done. Every detail was attended to, even to the extent of emailing us a pictorial social story written specifically for this event ahead of time.

Needless to say we had a terrific time! Well Done Dallas Museum of Art!