Never A Dull Moment: The Children's Museum

We went to the Boston Children's Museum last week - twice in two days! I took the kids on Tuesday morning while Brian was taking his anesthesia boards, then we were planning on a family outing the next day (Brian's last day before starting work) and Nathan begged to go back again. After both kids had meltdowns on the second day, I realized that agreeing to his request may have not been the smartest idea - the museum is FUN but loud and crowded and lots of stimulation and just tiring for everyone.  I'm definitely looking forward to when school starts and the kids and I will have smaller crowds here and at the aquarium (hopefully)!

Although I took my real camera with me, I decided to use my Iphone to take pictures inside the museum - and it does a pretty terrible job indoors.  But at least it gives me pictures of our activities.

  The first day, I just let the kids spend as long as they liked in the rooms we visited, since I knew that we would have more then enough return visits to see everything, so we only really experienced 3 rooms.  In the baby/toddler area, the kids had a blast playing with playdough (its been a while since we've done it at home) and Sarah loved the obsticle play structure geared right for her ability level.  Then we went to the "ready for kindergarten" room, where they both had a blast playing with miniature counting toys (Nathan's favorite was the mini dogbones and tweezers, Sarah's was some mini fruit), we had a picnic with other play food, alphabet magnets on a board, and then Sarah and I looked at some books.  In this room, I pretty much felt like we were doing the same activities we do at home, just in a new place, but since the kids were entertained I just went along with it.

Then we spent a little time in the "Kid Power" space, which is more geared toward gross motor activities, but it was so overrun with big kids we didn't get a great experience.  So we quickly moved onto the golf ball room (there's a more official name I'm sure) which was fun!  Here are just a few of the activities the kids did with the golf balls:

Then the next day I was planning on the family visiting the USS Constitution Museum and do a tour of the ship.  However, Nathan really REALLY wanted to go back to the Children's Museum, so we decided to humor him.  This time we went to way more rooms because it was probably Brian's one and only visit to the museum.  We all had lots of fun in the bubble room:

Then explored the art room, the tool room, went to a music and movement activity, back to the toddler room, then up to the third floor for another construction/climbing room.  This was where both kids had meltdowns, so we made it the last stop of the day.  Nathan got "stuck" inside a climbing apparatus because he was too scared to climb back down, and Sarah kept trying to climb on top of the truck table and was VERY angry when I wouldn't let her.

Both days I packed us a picnic lunch and both days we were able to sit at this cute little table designed by a "Katie MacDonald" for little kids.  The kids loved it, but unfortunately it doesn't really provide a great spot for adults to sit. (These pictures are from our first museum day when the children were in a better mood.)  And since I'm sure Grandmother at least is interested in what we had for lunch, these days our packed lunches usually include: sunnybutter and jelly sandwiches, cheese and crackers, pepper sticks and hummus, fruit (strawberries and/or grapes and/or applesauce), homemade cookies and water.