Philadelphia Museum of Natural History

Today for preschool we went on a field trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Natural History. It was a little crazy trying to get out the door by 9am with all three kids & all our things, drive down in the traffic, find a place to park on the street and walk to the museum in the rain; but it all worked out well. I was found a great parking space and made it to the museum early.
It was such a fun trip. We met up with everyone at 9:45, explored the museum for a while, and met up again at 10:20 at the ‘Dinosaur Dig.’ That was definitely a hit for all the kids. They were given special goggles and tools to dig for the bones. We didn’t get to stay quite as long as we would have liked, apparently they run a tight schedule in that area, but we enjoyed the time. Caleb especially thought it was great to sit and chip away at the rock around the bones. (I especially loved the 'cool' kid sized goggles!) From there we went to the large dinosaur exhibit which is always fun. Jacob and Caleb really enjoy dinosaurs and are pretty good at knowing which ones are which. We’ve checked out books about dinosaurs from the library and have a nice collection of dinosaur toys thanks to grandma, so needles to say Jacob and Caleb both really enjoyed that section. Matthew did great the whole time just hanging out in his little hip hammock. Can I also say how much I love it! It’s so much nicer for an older baby than a front carrier. He ended up even falling asleep the last 30 minutes of our visit. After the dinosaurs, we were able to see lots of neat ancient artifacts, animals, insects and fish. One area was focused specifically on modern animals, and had some live turtles, fish, snakes, and rabbits that were fun to watch. They also had a section of a bee hive with real bees inside. It was cool to watch them work and try to find the queen bee.

I only wish we could have stayed longer; there were a few areas that we didn’t have time to see. Both Jacob and Caleb were pretty sad and didn’t want to leave. Unfortunately the time was about to expire on our meter, and Matthew was getting hungry too. I guess we’ll have to head back another day and maybe Jeff will even be able to join us.