children's museum

When your friend offers free passes to the Children's Museum of History and Science in Fort Worth, you immediately respond to the group message!  We hadn't been to the museum for a few years, and since Brooke had another day off school, we had the perfect opportunity to go enjoy that time together.  I worried that it might be busy since school was out, but it definitely was not. 

Colby loved the huge dinosaur in the entry.

We spent the majority of our time in the Innovation Studio part of the museum...

Outings like this remind me how grateful I am that my kids have each other, a build-in playmate, a best friend for life. 

The dinosaur section was new since we last visited, and it was also a highlight.  Colby's foot inside a dinosaur track...

In this area, each screen allowed you to decorate a different "layer" of the dinosaur, all in real time.  Technology is pretty amazing!

Then it was on to the dinosaur dig!  This is what Brooke remembered most about our last visit.  Colby was a baby at the time so he didn't have his own memories of the activity, but I did tell him a little story about our last visit.  I was sitting on the ground with him in front of me.  He was kicking his chubby legs in the sand as we watched Brooke and Kevin dig for fossils.  I moved around to the front of him to take a picture when I noticed that he had something in his mouth.  I quickly put my fingers in there to grab whatever it was, and it was a big ROCK!  I have no idea how he even found it, let alone how he put it in his mouth without me noticing, but it was a pretty scary mom moment!

Things were different this visit, haha.  They worked independently for a long time and their different personalities really shone through.  Brooke slowly and carefully brushed and dusted off sections of the fossils.  Colby wanted to quickly uncover them with dog-like digging, haha, which of course bothered Brooke.

We spent a little time in the Natural Resource section, but it wasn't quite as interesting to the kids to learn about wind and water power, or about digging the Barnett Shoal. 

I kind of thought they were too big for the play area, but of course they wanted to check it out...

A lot of the costumes and accessories for each section were missing, but looking back, it was probably because of the whole coronavirus scare (more on that later).   The kids still enjoyed that section, but we definitely didn't stay there for long.        
 
We quickly walked through the Cattle Raisers museum, which was "dedicated to preserving and celebrating the vital history of the cattle industry."  The take home for my kids was that those poor cows had to be branded, even though the museum employee tried to tell us that it didn't hurt them because of their thick skin.  Not sure I buy that :/

As we walked down the final corridor, the paintings started talking to us.  Of course, I knew it was motion activated, but Brooke and Colby were pretty amazed by the whole thing.  They kept walking back to pictures and waiting for it to talk to them.

We checked out the Launchpad (space) section, which was seriously cool. My favorite was this display showing plasma energy, as shown through those glowing fingertips.

We were a little rushed through this exhibit so we could get to the planetarium show, but we still took a quick picture on the moon :)

The planetarium show, which we had to pay extra for, was a flop.  The guide was super dry, and the explanation of each constellation took FOREVER!  Poor Colby was bored out of his mind, and I didn't really blame him.  I was relieved when the whole thing was over and decided that we definitely wouldn't do portion again. 

The real highlight was spending over an hour building with these foam pieces in a totally deserted children's area.  My littles could have stayed another 45 minutes until the museum closed, but I was starving and wanted to leave.  We had packed a lunch, but the kids were having such a blast in the museum that they hadn't even asked to go back to the car for a snack.  That really tells you how much they were enjoying themselves because it's rare for my kids to not need a snack! 

I was super grateful to my friend, Liz Harrison, for giving us these passes and allowing us to have such an awesome (and educational) day together!!