Top 10 Museums

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Higgins Armory Museum

National Museum of Play

We are sorry, but we have removed this post becuase it is a part of our new book entitled Napkin Dreams.

 

 

 

 

Crayola Experience

The Crayola Experience in Easton, Pennsylvania was one stop I had been secretly excited about showing our kids. Not only did the boys learn about how crayons and markers are made, they got to explore the world of crayon art in a myriad of ways.

A life-sized dry erase car, doodling in the dark, and a host of other activities. There were plenty of take-home gifts including a four pack of exclusive crayons. We also got to see the world's biggest crayon, which is blue, which is fitting.

The Crayola Experience was cool, but a bit too crowded and expensive. No parking close to the museum for a big rig motorhome, so if you go, find another parking place nearby and drive your auto over.

Discovery Place

Our annual museum membership gave us free entrance to this nifty little museum called Discovery Place in downtown Charlotte. We always enjoy these hands-on museums since we have lots of tactile learners in our family!

We watched a demonstration on things that glow, otherwise known as luminescence. Most of the boys got to take part in some sort of volunteer help with this show (see video for Tanner and the water that glows!). Chase even got to take a close-up look at a glowing emperor scorpion.

We played with bbs, laid on a bed of nails, diverted water, watched a rock eating fish, touched some underwater animals, watched a dorky documentary on dolphins in 3D and took a turn at family tug-of-war! We had a great afternoon of exploration and Discovery at Discovery place!

Orlando Science Center

This post has been deleted because it is in our new book entitled Napkin Dreams. It can be found on Amazon.com

Carnegie Science Center

We continued enjoying our reciprocal museum membership when we visited the Carnegie Science Center in downtown Pittsburgh for free! This is one amazing museum and we wished we had carved out more time to spend there.

The first exhibit we made a beeline for was the robots exhibit. Here we got to see the robot hall of fame, play air hockey against a robot and watch a robot shoot hoops, among other things. This is a very cool exhibit.

Next we saw the aquarium exhibit where we explored undersea life with cameras, magnifying glasses and  close-up habitats! After this we went to an amazing show on electricity where our family was almost the lone guests for the show, joined by two gentlemen who let us have most of the fun! The boys all got to help first hand in this show, and so did Patsy, who was a source of great laughter. We loved this show and learned lots of things, and our favorite demonstration was the giant "lightning machine" that was loud and crackled with some huge voltage of electrical bursts.

The museum has an entire floor which is set up as a hands-on children's type museum. Here the boys sat in the earthquake cafe, pet a turtle, routed and re-routed water, made their own cartoons, and a host of other activities that put their noggins to work!

We love it when our kids get a mental workout and have a blast doing it! Thanks Carnegie Science Center!!

Bismarck, North Dakota

We spent a couple of the hottest days we have experienced on our trip in Bismarck, North Dakota. Fortunately we stayed a campground with a pool! Still we wanted to find some fun and free things to do. Bismarck has had some terrible flooding from the Missouri River, so a couple of the activities were looking at were closed due to damage from the flood.

We lucked out with a cool little kids' science museum that was part of our membership plan. Gateway to Science is a neat little place and our boys love these hands-on science museum. We learned firsthand about magnetism, lights and mirrors, water pressure, air pressure, generating electricity, levers and fulcrums and so much more! We could not get the boys to leave, even with the promise of food!

As we were leaving Gateway to Science, Patsy said "You boys just had a month's worth of science lessons and you didn't even know it!" Getting a membership to these science museums has been a great idea as we have saved hundreds of dollars just on the few we have went too!

After the trip to the science museum we went to a local diner called Kroll's Diner. Patsy had been wanting to take the family to an old fashioned silver diner that were so big in the 1950s. Kroll's fit that bill, plus it had a German soup I was hoping to try - Knoephla Soup. It is a cream based soup with dough and potatoes and is basically yummy. Even though it was hot outside, it was cool in the diner and the soup went down just fine! We had a great time at Kroll's!

Hanging out in Salt Lake City

We spent a great afternoon in downtown Salt Lake City. Our first stop was the Gateway Discovery Museum, a children's museum that was part of our membership program. This is a small little museum designed with kids under seven in mind.

Needless to stay our three younger boys loved the place and there were many shouts of amazement and excitement as we entered Gateway. Their favorite spot was the little city where they could dress up and play roles such as construction worker, letter carrier, farmer, grocer, etc.. Blake and Tanner may be a little old to play these games, but they can live a second childhood by playing with their little brothers who love to have them as playmates.

They also got to put on a little play for us by dressing up as Robin Hood and his merry men, play in a life-sized, albeit pretend helicopter, making sound effects and creating their own cartoons.

After a couple hours of this type of creative play we headed over to the nearby Ben and Jerry's ice-cream shop. You see April 12th was Free Cone Day at Ben and Jerry's which is quite a deal for a family of seven! The line was stretched out all along the outdoor mall, but the weather was pleasant and the line moved quickly and soon we were licking our way through flavors like Chunky Monkey, Chocolate Brownie and Maple Blondie! Yum Yum!!

After this we had to head over to Hatch Family Chocolates. We loved the Little Chocolatiers when they were on TLC, mostly because their chocolate creations looked so delectable. The show is off the air now, but we promised ourselves to stop in when we were in Salt Lake City. Just Patsy and I went in, leaving Blake in charge in the van outside. This way we could peruse in peace!

Patsy had a bit of a thrill as she got to talk to Steve, one of the owners and stars of the TV show. No autographs were exchanged, but he was very kind and asked us questions. His wife Katie is from Chicago so he was quite familiar with Illinois. I could tell there was a little thrill for Patsy getting to talk to a "celebrity."

We purchased a couple of turtles for ourselves and a mixture of chocolate covered Oreos and gummy worms for the boys. We did save these for later - with Ben and Jerry's still lingering on our taste buds and all.

Insect Lore

It's a bug-eat-bug world out there, princess. One of those "circle of life" kind of things.~ Hopper from A Bug's Life.

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Houston Children's Museum

Tanner made a caterpillar with wings at the Houston Children's Museum on New Year's Eve. The place was super-crowded, but we had fun anyway. Cool thing is we got in free due to our reciprical membership when we joined the Rockford Discovery Center. These memberships rock!

A little boy

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Rockford and Aurora

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Tooting at Grossology

On our trip to Rockford for Thanksgiving and ministry, we made a quick trip to the Discovery Center there where we joined to get their reciprocal membership to Children's Museums. They had a special Grossology exhibit there and the boys had a blast exploring the gross bodily function interactive displays! Here they enjoy the tooting machine.