Natural History Museum

Nicholas LOVES visiting the Natural History Museum and his favourite section is the dinosaurs. It always amazes me what he remembers from previous trips and how he manages to find his way around the myriad of rooms and passages. Every time we go, the boys notice different things, have different questions and take different things away from it all. I was very surprised by Nicholas' questions about whether the dinosaurs are real, why the dinosaurs are dead, how they make the dead dinosaurs move, how they got the bones out of the bodies etc. Does this mean that last time he actually thought this T-Rex was real and alive?

 

 

 

 

Nicholas has started showing an interest in buying things when we are in a shop.  Since he has been learning about money at school I decided to give him a chance to choose something from the dinosaur store and pay for it himself.  He settled on two dino-digs - "One for me and one for my little brother" he told the cashier - what a sweet sweet son I have.  The boys spent a lot of the next day digging away but I think it is still going to take a while before we extract all those bones!

 

We always visit two or three sections of the museum depending on everyone's energy levels.  This time the boys' second choice was the bird hall.  Nicholas started off asking questions like how they make the birds stand so still for so long followed by hundreds of questions related to the birds' mortality.  He also seemed horrified that that the dodos were extinct because the sailors ate them all. We always seem to end off in the Earth section to see the volcano and earthquake exhibits.  This time we were also lucky to stumble upon on special mineral display with a wonderfully informative guide.  I couldn't resist getting some rocks to take home for the boys.  I gave Nicholas £6 and told him that he had to share it equally with Daniel and they could each choose some rocks.  They came away with 2 minerals: Quartz (makes watches tick), Fluorite (found in toothpaste) and 2 stones: Tigers Eye (from South Africa) and Leopard Skin Stone (from Zimbabwe).  When we got home they had a great time investigating the minerals and rocks with the USB microscope that Uncle Pete kindly gave to them when he visited the other day!