Montshire Museum of Science, Part 2 - Indoors

After writing about outdoors in a previous blog entry, now, we'll visit indoors at the Montshire Museum of Science.

Sheila had been to the Montshire many times before with her own children when they were young children so there were no surprises for her nor was there much discovering for her to do. I, however, had never visited this museum before so it was all new to me... same for Lukey and Kenzie. It was a time to discover new territory!

The entrance of the museum is very nice... clean, very well organized, and the task lighting throughout the museum is very effective and it creates a nice mood. We quickly and easily paid our admission at the front desk and moved into all the science exhibits and interactive stations.

Once we showed Lukey and Kenzie what to do at these mirrors (the lead photo here), they had a lot of fun trying different things!

At first, when I pointed out this mirror, I think they were saying to themselves, "so what?... it's a mirror, Papa..."  Then, I levitated in this mirror... "oooooo..."

There was all sorts of aquatic life and the tanks were cleaner than we've seen in some well-funded aquariums! I actually wish that they had more of these displays with more species.

I tried to explain that the perch and sunfish we see in these tanks were the same type of fish as our resident lake friends, Marlin, Nemo and Dory. (I thought giving our resident perch and sunfish names they recognized and enjoy would help them get beyond their terrifying anxiety about being in the lake with these little fish... it didn't really work though.) These perch and sunfish (as well as different types of bass and even some Atlantic Salmon) in these tanks were quite large...

The museum is filled with stations to play with all sorts of different things you don't get to see anywhere else...

Bubbles of all sizes...

Blowing a BIIIGGGGG bubble....

Kenzie enjoyed the dancing ballerinas being spun by spinning different sized gears... and the gears are even interchangeable....

An infrared camera... Gee and I got to see which parts of our -older- bodies now have poor circulation... even though that was not the intended purpose of this science station... it was pretty obvious on the big screen though!

I asked the kids to stand in front of Bullwinkle here so I could shoot a photo of them. They obediently stood there but they both had the usual kid 'goofy-fake' smile on their faces with their arms unnaturally glued to their sides... I said to myself,"uggg... this won't work". I quickly asked them a question which I knew would make them laugh so I could get more natural looking photos and they instantly broke into some "ba-ba-boooey" chant! "That'll work..." it's better than a 'goofy-fake' smile with their arms glued to their sides...

Moths, moths and more moths...

A moth made out of moths... and, acquainting themselves to the Beatles... uhhhh, beetles... (the Beatles would have been more fun)...

Ants... moving through a network of tubes to feed their colony in the nest...

Lukey and Kenzie are well aware of Nan's scars around her knees from knee replacement surgery but I had difficulty getting them to understand that this was the type of thing the doctors put in place of her knees...  Anway, here is a photo of Nan's knee...

He looks a little devilish here, doesn't he?  "Enter... come into my lair... come closer..."

Everyone enjoyed the Montshire! I highly recommend this for a day outing with the kids. 

There is much to be learned here but, at four years old, most of the museum was over their heads but there was still plenty for them to do and learn. Plus, they were so excited that it was difficult keeping them at one station long enough to explain much. Some stations, however, we had to pull them away otherwise we never would have seen the entire museum in one day! 

As they get older, they will understand more and more about each of the stations in this nice educational museum.

We had a great time!