This is how we science!
For one of hubby’s Christmas gifts from Peanut and me, I decided to buy a family membership to the Buffalo Museum of Science. I think experience gifts can be some of the most fun – hubby and I don’t always do them, but when we do we really enjoy them. Still, it had never occurred to me to buy a membership to any museum or organization as a gift, for some reason. When we lived in Alexandria, Virginia we had an annual membership to Mount Vernon, but we just bought that on our first visit. And we’d been talking about getting a membership to the Buffalo Botanical Gardens but hadn’t gotten around to it. We love the Botanical Gardens and we go plenty, but ultimately I thought we’d get more use out of a Science Museum membership – especially after I looked into it and realized that (a) we’d only have to go three times in a year and the membership would have paid for itself and then some; (b) they have a dedicated toddler play area; and (c) there was a special Curious George exhibit coming, just for a temporary period, that would be free to members. Sold! So I picked up the membership cards and they were wrapped up under the tree for hubby to open. He was surprised and excited, because he loves the science museum, and we hadn’t been there since moving to Buffalo. We started using our membership right away, going for the first time on a chilly Saturday in late January.
When we first arrived, Peanut was extremely apprehensive. She didn’t appreciate the dinosaur skeleton towering over the registration desk and she was overwhelmed with the first few exhibits we visited. The first 45 minutes or so she spent clinging to my neck and refusing to be put down or held by anyone but me. (Awwww. So sweet! But also kind of exhausting to tote a clingy toddler and a third trimester baby bump around a museum.) Fortunately, she warmed up to the place when we got to the nanotechnology exhibit. There were blocks, crayons and sheets for coloring, and big magnifying glasses to play with. I’m sure it all factored into nanotechnology somehow, but I was too busy chasing Peanut around to read the explanatory placards. She got really into playing with the blocks and probably spent twenty minutes sitting in this chair arranging and rearranging them. (Focused play! Her teachers have been commenting lately that she really concentrates when she gets into something.)
After the nanotechnology exhibit we went to the motion room. This was when Peanut really got crazy. There was a lot to do in the motion room – you could build cars and race them on a track, move tiny foam balls through tubing you could arrange yourself, and levitate the same tiny foam balls over pipes with air blowing straight up – and more that we didn’t get to. Again, I missed out on a lot of the explanations of things due to chasing an increasingly excited toddler around. No big deal, though – I know we’ll go back plenty more times this year, so I can learn another time (maybe).
Peanut really liked the car racing track. She thought it was her own personal slide. We had to drag her away when some kids wanted to use it for its actual intended purpose.
There was running and shrieking. By the way, do you like Peanut’s shoes? She’s going through a phase right now where she’s opinionated about her footwear. I can still dress her in any outfit I want (so she looks reasonably coordinated in public) but she must wear her silver glitter Mary Janes at all times – even in the house. We’ve given up on trying to sell her on her sneakers for outings like this. Eventually she’ll get tired of the “style shoes.” Or grow out of them!
Hands down, the biggest hit was the air tubes. Peanut didn’t quite get that you were supposed to set them up and then float the balls. It was way more fun to hold a ball and let the air blow your baby hair straight up. Well… she’s got a point. Much hilarity ensued:
(I love this picture. Look how happy she is!)
At that point, we decided it was time to bug out and head home for lunch. As you can see, we didn’t even make it to the toddler play area! Really, with so many hands-on activities for all ages, the whole museum is kind of a toddler play area. The nice thing about having a membership is that we don’t feel compelled to push Peanut past her boundaries just to get our money’s worth (because the individual ticket prices are a little on the steep side). We know we can come back anytime with our membership – so if we just want to stay for an hour and Peanut only wants to play with one exhibit, we don’t stress about it at all. In fact, guess what we did the very next Saturday?
The next Saturday was the first day of the special Curious George exhibit. It’s a temporary installation from February to about mid-May, in which kids get to explore George’s city home and try a bunch of different activities. Peanut is recently obsessed with Curious George. It started at Christmas when we found a Curious George Christmas special and then discovered that there is a whole cartoon series (narrated by William H. Macy!) about George’s adventures. Peanut usually watches an episode over her morning milk before getting ready for school, and she loves the show. We also own several of the books, which Peanut wants to read constantly since discovering the cartoon. So, all this is to say, we knew the George exhibit was going to be a big hit.
And was it ever! I didn’t know if the exhibit would be more about the books, or independent, but it turned out it tracked the cartoon. If you haven’t been watching the cartoon every day since December, as we have, you may not think this is quite as cool, but we were running around shouting things like “Look, it’s Chef Pisghetti’s restaurant! There’s Gnocchi! Look, Peanut, the Renkins’ farm! Hey, it’s Professor Wiseman’s museum!”
It’s possible we were a little bit too excited.
Anyway, Peanut had a ball. She tried out some steering wheels (I think there was an actual point to these, and older kids might have been able to figure out what to do, but they were being monopolized by Peanut and a posse of other toddlers that were crawling all over them).
She tried on some hard hats at a construction site…
And there was a corner where you could stack these large foam blocks up and feed square blocks into a conveyor belt. Peanut spent about ten minutes throwing the blocks and cackling with glee. It was basically a toddler free-for-all in there, so we just let her go at it.
(I didn’t get any non-blurry pictures of that action, because she was moving too fast. In her style shoes, no less.)
Peanut also enjoyed exploring the mailboxes in George’s apartment building, and patting Hundley, the neat freak lobby dachshund.
Then she headed over to the corner of the room dedicated to the Renkins’ farm (neighbors of George and the Man with the Yellow Hat when they’re out at their country house) and found a stuffed bunny. Peanut was overwhelmed with joy. She stood in the middle of the room and shouted at the top of her lungs, “EVERYONE! I HAVE A BUNNY!”
Then Peanut and the bunny meandered over to the other side of the room, where there were some more science-focused activities for older kids. Peanut and the bunny spent several minutes fitting these test tubes into little round holes.
And she examined her fingers under a microscope with Daddy. Eventually (after about twenty minutes of carrying him around) we finally persuaded Peanut to return the bunny to the farm and head home. Peanut really had a fabulous time, and I’m so glad the Curious George exhibit will be open until May – I think we’ll be spending a lot of weekend mornings there this winter. In fact, Peanut’s school and my office are closed for the holiday today, so I’m thinking a visit to George might even be in order for this morning…
Do you have any museum memberships? What are your favorite local activities?
covered in flour 