Museum of Natural History

We can't miss $1 Tuesdays during the month of August! I know I posted about going here last year too. One major rule about going during $1 days is to go EARLY. We were the second car in the parking lot and were the first ones to enter.

Here's the gang as we waited till the museum opened. We were early by 8 minutes so we posed by the turtle. Last year Zach was very uncooperative and wouldn't sit on the turtle, at least this year he seemed to like it.

We saw the dinosaur display and talked to a guy about carnivorous plants then headed straight to their new exhibit, Deep Sea Treasures. We were the only ones in there the whole time we stayed in that room. That's the second rule I have, hit the special exhibits first while everyone else is roaming around the rest of the museum. My kids did the activities as many times as they wanted without having to wait.

I will say that I liked last years special exhibit better, it had something to do with chipmunks, it seemed to have a better appeal to young kids. There were a few interesting areas in the Deep Sea Treasures but it definitely wasn't anything special. There was one station where you could feel how cold water is in the deep sea. It was pretty cold.
This one was neat. You pressed a button and a big clear tube filled up with water. The tube had holes in it and the water would of course come out the holes. The question was why did the lowest hole squirt the farthest? I'll let you all google that answer if you don't know. :) Or just ask the girls.
There are squid in the deep sea so the kids put together a puzzle of a squid.
There were also port holes that you could look through, when you pushed a button you would see the fish, a few other exhibits and that was about it for that area.

We left there and headed to the Discovery Room, a popular place for little kids. That room was just boring this time. Last year they had squeeze bottles and you had to try and guess the smell, the year before they had some kind of matching sound game, this year nothing. It was just the usual. Zach liked the big aquarium in the corner, he always has. The other thing he played with in there was this: It's a magnetic bug table. You hold onto the magnet under the table and move the bugs around.

Lauren learned that she's about half the size of an ostrich.

Kristin learned that she's taller than an Emperor Penguin.We finished touring the rest of the museum and once we looped around back to where we came in the kids wanted to check out the auditorium to see what movie was playing. Last year we happened to see 2 dinosaurs mating, how fun! Thankfully they were not showing that movie again but one about the deep sea. It would have been neat to watch, they were talking about the glowing fish that look like they're see-through that live at the bottom of the ocean. Unfortunately Zach didn't want to sit still long enough for me to watch much of it so we left.

Definitely worth the $5 it cost for us all to get in. Can't wait to see what next year's exhibits are like.