Vacation--Day Six Crayola Factory

We changed hotels on Wednesday--leaving the Hershey area and moving to the Philadelphia area. On the way to our hotel near Valley Forge we went to the Crayola Factory

We first went to see a demonstration of how they make crayons and markers (this isn't the actual crayola factory--but they have a simulation of the factory set up for the kids to see). The kids got to have a crayon that was made during the demonstration. After the demonstration we went to the fun part--trying things out.

They had everything that crayola makes (which was also conveniently sold in the gift shop).

One area had every crayon color you could imagine--and some pictures to color:

They had a huge painting/finger painting area--one was where you would paint a stencil and then put paper over to make a picture

Then there was the fun finger painting area

When you went to the factory they gave you a bag to carry all your projects in. One of the most inspired things they had was a huge drying machine--you could put your paint projects in the drier on one side and it would come out dry on the other side (sometimes we had to put it in a few times to get it dry--but it was great!)

They also had an area to use the model magic (a type of modeling clay). It was very fun--the kids ended up buying this in the gift shop because they loved it so much.

One really neat area was where they had melted down the crayons and you could use the melted wax to decorate shapes--you had to be 5+ to do this on your own--but they let Matt and Alex do it together (as long as Matt was the one actually doing the work).

Aaron was excellent almost every day of the vacation--except while we were here. This is a picture of what Aaron was like almost the entire time we were there (with lots of mean looks cast in my direction as to why I couldn't make him happy).

After we finished at the Crayola factory, we discovered that the two floors above the Crayola Factory housed the National Canal Museum. It was a great little museum--teaching the kids how canals worked with a hands on display and lots of activities.

We had a great time. Unfortunately, we were a little late getting to the Crayola factory, then the canal museum made our visit a lot longer than we expected. Our next stop was Hopewell Furnace--Matt had gone there often as a kid and it looked really fun (and they had a Junior Ranger program). But the park closed at 5 and we arrived at 4:45. So we didn't get to see it. We did walk around an adjacent state park for a little while and then headed out to the hotel.