Monday, February 11, 2013

A First Visit to the National Children's Museum

This past weekend we hit the National Children's Museum with our 8 year old and Aurora, who's 1 1/2. The museum provided some excellent opportunities for the kids to play pretend (the cooking area being a highlight for both kids), be surrounded by a number of kid friendly exhibits and do some arts-and-crafting. The museum isn't as large as the one in Boston (my only point of reference), but there was definitely lots to do for Aurora, and our 8 year old had tons of fun, too. When we go back again, I'll probably take him directly to the arts and crafts classrooms first, as we explored that at the end and didn't have enough time to do all the activities there.

Aurora was in heaven when Elmo made an appearance.

Speaking of arts and crafts, I love that the materials and projects (community hats and paper beads) are easily replicated at home. I assume that's by design, and offers parents their own opportunity to learn a new parenting trick or two. Next rainy day, we are so busting out the junk mail headed for the recycling bin to turn it into jewelry.

If you've got young kids, you'll definitely want to keep the National Children's Museum in mind on those cold and rain days when you just need to get out.

As a bonus, the weather was warm enough that we could explore more of National Harbor and let the kids play on The Awakening - perhaps the greatest kid friendly sculpture of all time.

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