Have you been to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis lately?
I took my nephews a couple of months ago to get a preview of one of TWO new exhibits focused on China.
Unfortunately, we were just a few days early to see the Terra Cotta Warriors. But we will definitely be going back to see them (this is the ONLY place to see them in the entire country in 2014)!
The entire museum is decked out in celebration of these new exhibits...they even brought back the giant slide to celebrate the Great Wall of China this summer.
Sidenote: One of my other nephews was chosen to be the child to go down the slide with Santa Claus a couple of years ago. What a fun experience!
Back to present day...
The "Take Me There: China" exhibit opened in early May and is a great hands-on exhibit for children of all ages. My nephews are almost 7 and almost 9 and I was worried that the older one might think it was too "young" for him...boy, was I wrong!
They had a great time...from riding the Bullet Train (the 9-year-old even referenced the bullet train weeks later so I guess it made an impression) to playing the instruments in the city square.
Here are some of the highlights from our visit.
Learning what their animal symbols are...
Creating his own opera "mask"
You can email the final product too!
(Saw something similar at the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum!)
Moments later, this became a headlock...
There's even an animal hospital where you can care for baby pandas!
They drew some Chinese symbols
and learned to say a few simple words in Chinese!
The play food - both here in the restaurant and in the home kitchen -
was where they spent the most time...that surprised me!
We all practiced using chopsticks...I still can't use them.
Of course, they had to play with their play food!
We spent over an hour in the exhibit (if it wasn't a school night, we could have spent more) and went home promising to take them back.
For more information about the Take Me There: China exhibit, go here. It's part of the regular exhibits at the museum.
The Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit is at the museum until November 2, 2014 and does require a timed entry ticket (at an additional cost to regular museum admission).
If you've been to either of these exhibits, what did you like best? Please leave me a comment.
NOTE: The Children's Museum of Indianapolis invited me to a special preview of the Take Me There: China exhibit. All photos and opinions above are my own...who else would claim them!
I love your pictures! We went to both the Warriors and the Take Me There exhibits, and LOVED them. I like the timed entry for the Warriors exhibit because it controlled the crowds so that you could see what you wanted to see without jumping up and down and trying to look over heads. The girls liked everything, but our youngest has that water paper orders to come here because she was completely taken by the writing center in the Take Me There exhibit. I was going to blog on our visit as well, but so far farming and 4-H is taking the front seat to blogging. ;-)
ReplyDeleteI love the Children's Museum! It's sad I lived in town for 5 years & only went once...I'd love to take my niece & nephews sometime.
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