A Princess Preschool: Children's Museum of Indianapolis

With only a few short weeks left before we start school again full-time, we recently took a road trip! We traveled to my hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana last week for my cousin's wedding. I have to say that both girls were troopers for the 13 hour trip out. I had coloring books, color-by-numbers, books, and movies for entertainment. Oh, and finger puppets. The little finger puppets I bought before leaving had the girls in stitches, especially toward the end when they were just sick of being in the car.

Within a day, Mikayla had some sort of stomach bug, so we took things easy initially. Then we started in on the activities and family visits we had planned on. One of the nice things about visitng my hometown is that it is fun to take my girls to some of the places where I had so much fun as a child. To see the delight on their faces just warms a momma's heart!

Looking up from the bottom: Fireworks of Glass

The first activity we had planned was a trip to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis. My mom had been wanting to take them for a long time, so off we went! I don't know if it is really the largest children's museum in the world, but it has to be close. There are five stories that are just packed full of activities for children (and adults) of all ages. I know that every time I go to the museum, I learn something new!

We started off by visiting the dinosaur exhibit. There are so many different dinosaur bones to view and touch. We were able to pick up different bones and compare them to our bones, play with models, and compare the different dinosaur eggs. There were even scientists on-hand who were cleaning dinosaur bones and were willing to answer all of our questions.

We moved on to many other exhibits, but some of the classic "must-see" exhibits include the train on the bottom level, the water clock, and the blown-glass sculpture "Fireworks of Glass" that extends for four stories. My favorite is the Water Clock. I think I am old enough to remember when it came to the museum, and I remember spending many days waiting for the hour to change so we could watch the water flush out and back into the bowl. Here is a video of how it works:

We also went to the planetarium-- it played an age-appropriate video which included Big Bird and Elmo. They taught the girls how to find the Big Dipper and the North Star. There was also some discussion of the differences in gravity on the moon vs planet Earth. Unfortunately, no pictures were allowed in there. Susie loved seeing Elmo though!

The science center was a little above the girls' heads but there were some things they really enjoyed. They sorted play food into the appropriate food groups, played with pulleys, and even built towers from gigantic legos.

Sorting food into food groups

Legos!

At the end of the day, we made sure to spend some time in the Dora and Diego exhibit. Mikayla and Susannah really had a blast! There was an area that was intended to encourage increased activity for children (as in, get off the couch). Mikayla loved the monkey bars and the rock wall. There was another area where they could be "animal rescuers" and examine the wild animals. Susannah wouldn't leave that part of the exhibit. Then, as it happened, we were there for a program where the girls were assigned an animal and had to discover what its favorite food was, where it lived, and what its footprints looked like. They earned a badge for completing the activity and a little book with their spider monkey info. It was a lot of fun, but they were exhausted at the end of it!