Showing posts with label seeds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label seeds. Show all posts

Monday, March 16, 2009

Children's Museum

Friday, Daddy took off work and we went to the Indianapolis Children's Museum. There is a Lego's exhibit there that we really wanted to see. And we love going there. And it's been a long time since we had been there--K had just turned one the last time we were there!

We left a little later than anticipated, due to some TV difficulties (see future post). We got there around 10:30 or so and didn't leave the museum til close til 4 that afternoon. It was a long day, but we had so much fun.

There are 5 levels of stuff to see (one level was the store, ticket center, and food court-so really only 4) and you could spend hours on each level. The first level (which was actually the basement) had a whole train section with a real engine, a LOT of toy trains on display, a ticket counter (to sell train tickets) and ....

...what they call Fireworks of Glass. It is a massive amount of blown glass in all different shapes and colors. It's really pretty. K girl really liked this exhibit. They even had some that you could play with. The tower goes through the middle of the museum almost to the top level.


On this level they also had an "underwater" adventure and a entire section on mummies.

From the basement we went into the Dinosphere exhibit which is actually on 3 floors. There are skeletons, puzzles, places you can draw, displays, movies, the Dinosphere (kinda like a Planetarium but with dino stuff), a place the kids can do a "dig", and a Prep lab. K really liked this huge "nest" with eggs in it. She talked about it on the way home and it took us a little bit to figure out what she was talking about. The prep lab was pretty cool: they were actually working on real fossils. That was interesting to see.

The next level houses the "revolving" exhibits. Until May 3 there is a Lego exhibit and a Comic book exhibit. The Lego one was AWESOME! They had all kids of Lego's in there! All sizes. K loved building. She worked on a Princess castle. She actually cried when we had to move on. (For those of you needing birthday presents, take note. I think they are the "Duplo" brand of Lego's) There were some awesome displays in there too. Here is just one example. The entire dragon is made out of Lego's. Impressive!
There was also a slide, dress up costumes, magnets, and a "Lego video game" in this section. For the game, you designed your own catapult and tried to break down the castle wall. Pretty cool.

Then we went into the Comic book exhibit. There is actually one of the Batmobiles that was used for the new movies. That was really cool. And A LOT of comic books (according to the display, there was almost 20, 000!). I guess it was someone's collection that was donated to the museum. And all kinds of figurines, more dress up stuff, posters, movies, and more hands on stuff.


The next level has what they call the PlayScape, which is a lot of fun if all the other kids there are well supervised. You and I both know, that happens. It's more for K's age, but they both had fun. There's more dress up (K was a bee), a water table, a sand table, you can plant "flowers", a play house, some slides.... but all geared for littler ones. The other things on that level we skipped, cuz they are a little above my kiddies and K was getting very grumpy cuz it was nap time. So we went on up to the next level.

Up here was the Science Works, where once again, it's alot of fun if the other kiddies are supervised. There is a construction site with some machines that you can use and they have "dirt" to use. There were some older kids that were throwing the dirt. Ouch! We left that section quickly. But there were other cool things, like hulu hoops, buckets to walk on (remember these?)

They also had an oversized tic tac toe, and oversized connect four, checkers, Mr. Potato Head, video games (PS2, Xbox, Nintendo, etc). They also had a Biotechnology Learning Center. I think for the older kids, they explained DNA, but for my kids age it was much simpler. They got to plant seeds in plastic gloves. They soaked cotton balls with water and put them in the fingers of the glove. On each cotton ball they put a different seed. With sunlight and some air, these should grow in the glove. They are currently hanging in my kitchen window (nice curtains) and we will see. If they turn out well, I'll post their results. There is also a carousel on the top floor that we rode.

On our way out, we stopped by the cardboard construction Lego guys for pictures. Then we went to eat (see future post), stopped at Wal Mart for a few groceries, stopped at Best Buy, Target, and Game Stop looking for an extra Wheel to go with our new Mario Kart for the Wii. No one had it except Game Stop. Why didn't we just try there first? We finally got home around 7 pm. It was a long day, but we had so much fun! (And now this is a really long post!)