Museum of Natural Curiosity

We had heard that the Museum of Natural Curiosity at Thanksgiving Point was really cool to see, and we just found out that they have "$2 Tuesdays" in August.  Luckily, we happened to have 1 Tuesday left, so Bryan left work early and we all went down to check it out.

It was super cool!  There were 5 main areas to explore.  The first was Rainforest, which was a gigantic playland with rope swings and bridges, slides, and fun things to do, like weigh yourself to see how many grasshoppers you weigh, or how many hippos you weigh, etc.  

Here's Miles, trying to hold on and hang upside down like a sloth, with a timer counting his seconds.  It's a lot harder than it looks!

In the Water Works area there is all sorts of learning about water and air movement, with lots of ways to get wet and then dry off!  Here are the kids in a 80 mph windstorm.

In the Geometry Playground they had a bunch of neat hands-on things to do with shapes.  This picture shows Bree holding up different patterns to make a kaleidoscope.  I should have taken a better picture of this thing--it was super cool.  It was about 6 feet long, so that lighted shape you see at the end is pretty far away from her.  She stayed there forever.

Outside is the Discovery Garden with different plants and animals to explore about.  There is also "Archimedes Playground" with some neat machines to play on/with.  (Also, on the playground we saw a kid--4ish--drop his drawers and pee all over the playground.  That kid had distance; we just kind of watched in shock and were glad that we weren't within 6-8 feet of him!  His poor mother was there alone, I think, and had her hands full; she was mortified when she discovered what happened. Ha!)

I guess I didn't get any photos of the last area, called Kidopolis, which is a little city filled with all sorts of fun things to do.  Our kids' favorite was the vet clinic where they played with/diagnosed the stuffed animals.  I will definitely be planning a trip back there next August, when we can stay longer before school starts.  It was a really fun place and I'd highly recommend it!