Trip to the children's museum

On our way to my parents house for the Thanksgiving break ,we stop in Indianapolis for the weekend, as my husband had a conference to attend.  I have heard great things about the children's museum and it didn't disappoint us.

They have an excellent dinosaur section and several paleontologist where available to talk to the kids.  The kids got to see them working on the Dinosaur bones

This is a new dinosaur that they discovered several years ago and are still working on...this is what they think it looks like and their was even a National Geographic article on the discovery...I forgot what it was called

Lots of hands on exhibits

Examining a saber tooth tigers long tooth

Seeing fossilized skin on dinosaur bones

This was something new we hadn't learned before.  Plant eating dinosaurs tended to have rounder eggs

whereas meat eating dinosaurs had longer narrower eggs.  

This exhibit was excellent and the kids and I spent well over two hours in this section alone!

We were very disappointed to learned we missed the Terra-cotta Army exhibit, which had just closed a couple of weeks before.  However there were a few things still available that we could explore and learn about

Kids worked on reconstructing a terra cotta warrior

Success!

Examining various chinese handwriting

and pottery

We spent a great deal of time in the Egyptian section which is Firedrakes favorite.  She loved interacting with the docents

They had a wonderful exhibit about the power of children which focused on three children during different eras.  We spent the greatest time here and my kids really walked away with a greater understanding of how cruel the world can be when people don't educate themselves. 

First we visited the Anne frank section where we saw a play about her life

Outside the museum is a sapling of the tree that grew outside her fathers office.  There are only four of these saplings inside the United States.  This is the tree that Anne writes about in her dairy.

Next we visited the Ruby Bridges exhibit and learned about the obstacles this little girl had to overcome just to attend school

Watching a video of her life

Next was the Ryan White exhibit, I told the kids that that I remember this period and the fear that people had, which is not unlike the fear that ebola puts in people.

Again we explored the many exhibits. My kids were most horrified at the school locker scene where there were audio of children and adults calling Ryan horrible names

Watching a story about his life...this entire exhibit was excellent and I know my kids walked away from it a little more determined to do the right thing.  We had some great discussions after our visit.

we explored the DNA lab

and then extracted DNA from wheat

the kids had extracted DNA from strawberries a few years ago but this was a nice review for them

Success!

We really enjoyed touring this Children's museum and if you are ever in the area, I highly recommend visiting.  We spent over 6 and a half hours there and still didn't see everything!