In Which I Use the Word "Awesome" a Lot

So I've mentioned a few times how much I hope my kids are readers. Every day that goes by they get more and more into books which makes my heart so happy. So imagine my excitement when we arrived at the Minnesota Children's Museum yesterday to see that their feature exhibit is based on classic children's story books.

The kids weren't familiar with every single book featured, but they are well acquainted with Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, The Snowy Day, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and the Find Spot series. The exhibits were interactive, imaginative and just so incredibly awesome. I think I just added Create Awesome Children's Museum Exhibits to my list of dream jobs.

Pacey's favorite by far was the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree. If you're not familiar with this story, it's about the letters of the alphabet climbing up a coconut tree and subsequently falling out. Anyway, they had a huge coconut tree with a vertical conveyer belt that had little shelves you could put these wooden letter tiles on and watch them go up the tree and then shoot out the bottom of the tree. I literally couldn't drag Pacey away from it. The coolest thing was that when I watched what he was doing, I noticed that he was selecting a letter tile and then waiting for the matching letter shelf to come up the conveyer belt so he could put the letter on the "correct" shelf. It's so interesting to watch this kid in action. Sometimes it can seem like he's using a toy or activity in a really strange way, but there is always a method to his madness.

My favorite exhibit was The Snowy Day. There was a path you could walk that was printed with Peter's footsteps pointing "out like this" and "in like that." The coolest thing was that as you stepped onto the beginning of the path, speakers played a recorded sound of feet crunching in the snow. So, so cool.

I could go on for a long time about the ingenuity of these exhibits but I'll just share some pictures instead. Not pictured would be the moment at which I lost Brighton (thanks to an observant employee I found her right away in an adjacent alcove) and that other incident where Pacey got into an elevator by himself. Thankfully he didn't push a button for another floor so I was able to retrieve him without dashing up and down flights of stairs. Always an adventure with these two.

Mr. MacGregor's farm stand

Putting Peter Rabbit to bed

Giant game of Operation in the Grossology
exhibit

There was an anthill maze in the nature
exhibit, featuring oversized insects lurking
in dark corners. The kids loved it but I spent
the whole time praying I wouldn't have to go
in and rescue anyone. *shudder*

Absolutely awesome behavior and endless
energy until it was time to go and then
they lost their collective minds and use of
their legs. 

Oh, and I know it's juvenile, but I love that I have kids old enough to appreciate the humor in an exhibit designed around the less savory functions of the human body. Think: giant man who "drinks" soda and lets out belches, a Vomit Center, smell tests for the various gross smells produced by bacteria in our bodies, an explanation of the origin of farts, etc. So awesome.