Thursday, January 20, 2011

Children's Museum

For the money that mom & dad Griffiths sent for Christmas we decided to become a member of the Dayton Society of Natural History in Dayton Ohio. Why Ohio you might be asking? Because with a $100 membership you get reciprocal benefits to children's museums, zoos, aquariums, and natural history museums across the nation. And in particular, several children's museums close to us in Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and DC.

I had never before heard of (much less been to) a children's museum. For those of you out there like me, they are less like museums and more like glorified children's play places. The few that we have visited are in warehouses and they are full of climbing and building things. We remembered our camera when we went to the museum in Baltimore and Lancaster, PA, but we have forgotten our camera both times that we visited our favorite one in Wilmington, DE.

I tried (but failed) to get a good picture of the 3 story urban treehouse in Baltimore. Ruby was too young to trust in this and the older kids and noise scared Anne, so they didn't get into this as much as I had hoped. Here is a picture that captured part of it... (that's Ruby in the pink and Megan is holding Anne next to her)


There was a room full of drums with plastic hollow tubes. You can't imagine the decibel level, but of course the girls loved it.


We we drove the hour to Lancaster, during which we saw several horses and buggies of the Amish, but we were pretty disappointed to see that the building was very small. But it was packed full of fun things to do and we had a ball for a few hours. Megan enjoyed the face painting area. The paints were water colors. Brilliant!

After Megan painted this bad boy on me I got some amazing expressions from others in the museum.

My favorite part was the snow area. They had snowballs made from wool that were perfect for throwing (and being hit).

Lucy just loves the backpack carrier.

They had a room full of dress-ups, big styrofoam props, and a small stage.

Ruby found a wolf, but lost interest before Anne found a red hood :(

This is Megan's favorite picture. Who wouldn't love this girl (guy)?

Thanks Jen for the blanket!