Museum of Ancient Life

Back on the 7th of April, my mom & I took the boys to the Museum of Ancient Life (which we just all the "dinosaur museum"...not to be confused with the "dinosaur park" coming in a later post). Apparently the museum has the world's largest display of mounted dinosaurs! They have done a really great job too...displaying things in life-like poses, and having a good balance of things to involve all age groups.

A picture of my mom with the boys before we all went in:

And me & my boys roaring like the t-rex behind us...

As we've learned about dinosaurs Noah thought it was fun to learn about people whose job it is to dig for and study their fossils. So 'paleontologist' was a word Noah threw out several times when talking about exhibits like this. It's just so cute to hear a word like that come out of your toddler's mouth.

Noah choosing his own dinosaur pose for this picture...

A perfectly placed little hands-on exhibit for the younger kids, which I felt seemed to reassure them that this place would continue to keep interesting and fun intertwined.

Later on in the museum the boys enjoyed playing at this erosion table. They could dig to discover plastic dinosaurs (or bury them) in the sand, as well as dam up water to be released in flash-flood fashion. It was a perfect hands on exhibit to both explain things to the boys, as well as to just sit back and let them play.



I stopped the boys for a photo later on in the museum, and got such a laugh out of what I ended up with that I simply had to include it. I'm pretty sure that Noah was trying to make Lincoln look at the picture while not wanting to step out of his dinosaur role for the pending photograph.

Another try at getting a shot of the boys together. Noah was really into being one of the dinosaurs in our pictures.

I thought this shot of Noah was just sweet. Sweet meaning cute.

Toward the end of the museum there was a replica of the Carcharadon Megalodon - the largest carnivorous shark ever. Lincoln was actually a little bit hesitant to go up to it at first (understandably), but after he watched Noah approach it safely he agreed to go stand next to it for a picture.


Noah, on the other hand, thought the shark was suuuper cool. And he insisted that I take a picture of just him posing like this in front of the shark. "Aaaaaagh!"

The last hands on exhibit before exiting the museum was this dig site where kids could be little paleontologists and excavate dinosaur fossils. They both thought that was really cool, and so did I until they started to throw sand at each other. *sigh* It was a good thing that the museum was closing at that point anyway, because I didn't feel as bad sticking to my guns and make them leave after warning them that we would leave if they threw sand "one more time..."

One last sweet photo of my Noah before the final sand throwing incident. They really did love it there, and they were really good most of the time. I'm so glad that we went, and it was really fun that my mom was able to come with us too! Thanks, Mom!
Addendum: I have to add how amazed that I continue to be at how much information kids' brains absorb. Over the last several weeks since our visit to this museum Noah has randomly brought up several different things we saw or discussed there. For example...before exiting the museum there is an area that shows pictures of other animals that are extinct, as well as animals that are endangered. That really interested Noah, and when have seen pictures of various animals (emperor penguins, for example) Noah has piped up..."Mom, that animal is endangered to become extinct! We better be careful!"