Field Trip : Houston Museum of Natural Science

This year we are participating in a local Co-op that incorporates several things including Field Trips. Each Semester there are two big field trips and this was one of them to the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences.

The group in front of the museum. 

 This Co-op is enormous and this only represents about 5 of the about 35 families involved.  We absolutely love this museum. 

 Sweetie posing in the paleontology exhibit. Which I found very amusing as they had exhibits with names such as Armadillo-zilla and Sloth-zilla...I'm not kidding. 

 Pretending to be eaten by T-Rex

 The Jaw of a Megaleaon...we recently listened to Shark Tales in the series Gray the hero of the series is a Megaladon so this was especially interesting to the children.

 Playing a little bit during lunch involved chasing the birds and for ShooShoo yelling 'no bird'!

 The twins and Ms. Bethany (who by the way will soon be Mrs. Cook ;) ) looking at the hissing cockroaches. 

 For the first time we visited the Cockerall Butterfly Exhibit and it was amazing there were butterflies everywhere. They were landing on you flying within inches of you and just putting on a show everywhere!

 One of the curators in the butterfly exhibit was holding this little creature. The kiddos were able to pet it.

 Nothing like posing with some larva/caterpillar?

Eating some Sour Cream & Chives crickets 

Bubba ate the most and really seemed to enjoy them. However, everyone ate at least one!

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Mayborn Mueseum

Severa Saturdays ago we went to the Mayborn Museum in Waco. I would consider this a combination of a children's, natural science & science museum. We went to see the Lost Egypt Exhibit which included a real mummy!

 They had lots of interactive activities for the children so I girls spent a lot of time in a small space experimenting with the activities. After we finished in the traveling exhibit we headed out to explore the rest of the library. First stop the trains...

Then to the discovery rooms where we played with starfish...

Dressed up like folks around the world

Played with bubbles


We went down stairs to what they termed giant dioramas of the Texas wildlife, Pioneer times and a cast from a Mammoth.


Throughout this area of the museum the children were rewarded with 'Chik-fil-a points' for every evolutionary idea they found. We reward them with Chik-fil-a dinners for finding examples of character in the Bible. McDaddy expanded it to include the museum exhibits so we can encourage our children to think critically.

Well, that's pretty much it for our field trip to the Mayborn Museum in Waco. I think the entire museum experience it is definitely worth the trip because the kids said repeatedly how much fun they were having at the museum. However, I do not think the Lost Egypt Exhibit was particularly exemplary, it was ,however, very interesting.

The Mayborn is basically a supped up children's museum with a lot of interesting exhibits. The bottom floor seems to be focused more at the Sugar Pie crowd while the upstairs is focused on the elementary aged children. I think the exhibits may be a little too young for you run of the mill middle school students.The traveling exhibits add depth to the museum trip. You should plan on spending several hours at this museum.

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