We went to the Field Museum on Tuesday. N2 seem really interested in animals and dinosaurs so we thought that they might enjoy the Field Museum this year. We started by looking at Sue and then took a look at a few of the stuffed animals. N2 are so used to zoos so they wanted the animals to move! They found a staircase so we headed upstairs instead of looking through the rest of the animals. We saw the dinosaur exhibit next. You have to go through an exhibit called the Evolving Planet before you can get to the dinosaur bones. It's really neat how it walks you through the history of the earth and the creatures that lived during those periods. At the beginning they play some eerie music (it's not really eerie but I guess to Noah it was). Noah kept saying it wanted to get out of this place. I hurried along with him to find the dinosaur bones. He was mostly interested in them. Natalie found the buttons for each dinosaur that when you pressed them a kid pronounced the name of the dinosaur for you. I think she pushed each button 15 times. By the end of pushing the button she could kind of say the names of the dinosaurs. N2 found a footprint of an apatosaurus to sit in.
There was also a real dinosaur bone that you could touch!
After lunch we went to the Inside Ancient Egypt exhibit. I seem to remember more hands on things there. They must have gotten rid of them! Both N2 were fascinated with mummies. Natalie and I got separated from Brian and Noah and we eventually found them after Natalie told me she wanted to see more mummies. Noah and Brian had been looking at the mummies the whole time! There are several dioramas that show how they turned a body into a mummy which Noah found extremely fascinating. Noah said his favorite part was when we went into the pyramid part upstairs and got to look down at where one of the mummies was buried. N2 did try to move a pyramid block by themselves. Don't hire them to build your next pyramid!
We then wandered through more of the stuffed animals (which Natalie said was her favorite part). I remember thinking that the animals were really neat when I was younger but the whole time I was there this time I just kept thinking of what a waste it was to kill these animals to put them in a museum. There was a lion with 4 baby cubs that had to be less than a week old. Brian did read a sign that talked about it and most of the animals were brought to the museum before the existence of zoos. So the only way people could see exotic animals was this way. Some of the animals were killed because they were predators and a problem in a specific region. Then the animals were donated to the zoo. Others were killed for the purpose of putting them in the museum. The animals that are more recent (like one of their panda bears) were ones that died for whatever reason in a zoo and then stuffed and given to the museum. That made me feel slightly better! Ok, getting off my soapbox.
We headed back upstairs to see the gems because Brian said Noah was really interested in rocks. N2 were not impressed by the gems. I was! After that it was time to go home. There is a family play lab that is only open Thursday-Monday and maybe it would have been more fun for N2 if we had gone on a day that it was open. Oh well, next time!
You know, Grace and I were just talking about the Egypt exhibit, because I remember there being a lot of hands-on things there, too. But Grace said it is totally different now.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering how Amelia would like the Field Museum after Aunt Cheri commented that Chase and Natalie loved one they had visited. So, I was interested to hear how your kids liked it. Pretty much what I would have expected.