When we first walked in the door, a volunteer was holding a baby crocodile to greet us. Megan was excited to pet the crocodile, but Amelia did not want to touch it. Then we went to the little kid section, and another volunteer had a great big snake for the kids to pat. Megan thought that was wonderful! Megan really likes reptiles.
The most popular attraction in the little kid section was the orange grove and processing center. Amelia could pick oranges from the tree, collect them in a crate, dump the crate in a bin, then pedal a bicycle to move the oranges along a screw conveyor. Or, you could place the crate onto a conveyor belt, and it would dump out the oranges and blow them through tubes back into the tree. It was pretty fun! Megan liked trying to pedal the tractor, although her legs were a little short.
The museum had a section on hurricanes, with a booth you could stand in to experience hurricane force winds. Ben took Megan into it, and she did NOT like it. Here's what Ben looks like in 92 mile-per-hour winds.
Amelia's favorite part of the museum was digging in rubber mulch for "dinosaur bones" which were actually some kind of sea animal bones and shark teeth. We got to take a shark tooth home, but it might have been lost in the laundry.
Oh no, Mommy and Amelia have been eaten by a giant prehistoric shark!
Upstairs they had a great exhibit about airplanes and space. We spent most of our time there trying to use the flight simulators. Amelia could never figure out how to take off on her own (it's complicated!) but she sure had fun trying! Ben helped her fly the jumbo jet:
We also spent a lot of time playing at the magnet table with big nuts. We built and knocked down lots of towers, and then the girls decided to wear the nuts as rings:
Because it was the Saturday before Easter, the museum had an Easter egg hunt for kids age 6 and under. It was a madhouse, as you would expect, as the older kids rushed past the younger kids and collected sacks full of eggs. Megan managed to get two eggs, and Amelia got four. Amelia was delighted to discover that her eggs contained a tiny eraser, a tattoo and two pieces of chocolate. She asked why she only got 4 eggs, and we told her it was because she was almost 4 years old (coincidentally, that worked out perfectly for Megan, too!) I don't think I would ever do a public Easter egg hunt again unless it was divided up into much much smaller age groups.
We ate lunch at Subway in the open-air atrium of the museum so that we could watch the gigantic clock tower marble roller. The marbles were bowling ball sized, and it was very fun to watch.
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