Watching Ben Stiller in Night at the Museum is one of many children’s fantasies. Imagine if going to a museum was a real interactive discovery of dinosaurs and histories heroes available for you to hang out with. While you may not be able to hang out with a fetch playing skeleton of a T rex, museums can be just as fun and exciting for children and adults. These buildings are the vessels that contain human and natural history, planetariums full of outer space, and even exhibits you can reach out and touch. Here are some things these popular places have to offer and why spending the day in a museum can be awesome.
Interactive and Children’s Museums
65 million years ago the planet was the home to prehistoric animals and mammals. The most famous of these beasts were the “terrible lizards” or dinosaurs. Kids love dinosaurs for so many reasons. Researchers have looked into why children have such a fascination with these creatures. For one thing, dinosaurs are cool looking. With the discoveries of more species all the time, their anatomy and physics display interesting spikes, scales, and with some imagination amazing colors. Dinosaurs may look fierce but they are also safe; there are no Stegosaurus’s lumbering around to smoosh anyone. They also seem to encourage more learning. Children thirst for knowledge and want to dive right in when they discover something new they enjoy. For more hands on learning, some offer a way to participate physically. These are called interactive museums, created to enhance the visitor’s experience by being a part of the exhibit. Interactive museums are a great way everyone can learn in addition to having fun. Touching museum exhibitions may seem forbidden but for many places, it is encouraged. Feeling a part of the learning can help you retain the information you are seeing. In Early Childhood Education, play time is vital. Interactive museums let kids give their dramatic play a go, acting out real world and fantasy scenarios.
Art Museums
Art museums display various types and ranges of paintings and sculptures created from all kinds of materials. Art can speak to some in one way while others may simply enjoy the colors the artist used. Beyond the paint strokes of famous artists such as Monet, some create works from paper like realistic faces to toilet paper roll wall art you can even try at home. If you like history with your art, you can visit the MET’s Cloister museum in Washington Heights NYC. It displays the famous Unicorn Tapestry and centrally located garden grows medicinal plants that may have been found in a medieval apothecary. Ornate jewelry boxes created in gold with precious stones and patina covered vases can be found in addition to oil paintings depicting various religious icons can be appreciated within the galleries. And if you’re fascinated by the American Indian culture and arts, you may find interesting pieces from an online american indian art auction.
Science, Air and Space
For science lovers, you can spend the day gazing at the stars in an air and space museum. Here you can eat freeze dried ice cream like the astronauts and take in a show at the planetarium. A qualified speaker projects constellations and the planets upon the ceiling and discussing man’s fascination in the night sky. If you want to learn about flight a little closer than space, you can sit in a flight simulator at the National Naval and Avian Museum. The Wright Brothers helped ignite our passion to fly when they took to the sky in their powered airplane in December 1903. These brothers improved this design, making way for modern flight. Since then humans have landed on the moon, flew jets faster than sound, and won world wars because of the love of learning about and improving on flying machines.
Natural History Museums
Some museums display exhibits that stare right back at you. Natural history museums show you the beautiful and necessity of conservation, biology, and the evolution of life itself. The American Museum of Natural History in NYC displays a life size replica of the blue whale that hangs above visitors. It is the biggest animal ever, even larger than the towering dinosaur skeleton you are greeted with when first entering the building. Before your visit you can even watch a video of museum workers scrubbing the massive body it on their website. Take a tour through zoology and the inner workings of the world’s vertebrates, explore the seas and ocean life, and decide if a mammoth is a mastodon or what is the difference? You can inquire about programs for yourself and your family to enjoy. Your kids can even spend the night either hacking a computer in the STEM program or sleeping under that big blue whale and pondering about life around them.