Tag: day trip

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Natural History Museum holiday day trip

Two days into the Easter holidays and the kids were already driving me crazy! The first day was spent out, shopping for birthday presents for my youngest, which in fact ended up as a day of moaning children who just wanted to go home so they could go out to play. So on Tuesday a friend of mine (whose kids were also driving her crazy) and I got together and took all six children up to South Kensington to the Natural History Museum (http://www.nhm.ac.uk).

I love taking the kids to a museum for a day out for lots of reasons. To start with, most London museums have free entry which, for a mum on a tight budget, is a god send. Secondly, I am lucky that all three of my children love to learn and so love to go and explore and see lots of different things. Thirdly, the Natural History Museum, in particular, happens to be somewhere I really enjoy going. I must have taken my children to this museum at least half a dozen times over the years, but it seems like they learn something new every time we go (because I certainly seem to). That’s the beauty of it really, there is just so much to see that you can never really take it all in, in just one trip.

Of course, the fact that we had other children with us this time meant they had more fun, and it actually made life easier. For once, my son had another boy around to talk to, even though he’s the same age as my youngest, but they all got on well together. And my older daughter had a girl closer to her own age to talk to, so for once they were all happy. It felt just that little bit safer to let them wander off slightly to explore on their own because there is safety in numbers after all.

My son is dinosaur mad, so he would probably be happy to just visit the dinosaur section. My younger daughter loves all animals (with her dreams of being a vet one day) and she does tend to get very over excited in the stuffed mammal section. I find it very sad, personally, that some of the specimens are now so old that they are very faded, but at the same time I think it is wonderful that they are not prepared to source new specimens for taxidermy purposes. It kind of shows the children that although they are faded, if they were to be replaced, a potentially endangered species would have to die, just to provide a body to be looked at through glass. And my animal loving daughter is absolutely heartbroken at the thought of any animal dying. I personally just love seeing the polar bear (being my favourite animal). I could genuinely stand and stare at that polar bear through that glass case for hours. I just find looking at the big fluffy bear very soothing and relaxing. The children found it fascinating just how big their feet are and working out why!

I always take a packed lunch with us, which I usually make myself. This trip, however, I went to make sandwiches and found out too late that the kids had eaten all the bread and there wasn’t really anything in the fridge to go in sandwiches anyway. But even buying some sausage rolls, chicken bites and a sandwich on the way to the train station was cheaper than considering lunch in the café at the museum. As much as I like to do my bit to support the museum, I am not prepared to pay for what I consider to be ridiculously overpriced food that, to be honest, my kids probably wouldn’t want to eat anyway.

I much prefer (and by I, I mean my children) to support the museum by spending a small fortune in the gift shop!! For once, they had all been really keen to do jobs around the house and earn some pocket money to take with them. And even though they brought their own money with them I still spent over £50 in the gift shop (I sigh). Still cheaper than some days out and other gift shops we’ve been to though!

By the time we got home I had three very tired, but very happy children. They spent the whole train ride home talking about what their favourite things had been, what they didn’t like and what they want to see again. They all sounded ever so intellectual and I couldn’t have been prouder…no matter how tired I was!

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Museum of London holiday day trip

The Fire of London

Another day, so another day trip for bored children during the holidays. Today, Mum and I took the kids to the Museum of London. Aimee and Liam have both learned about the Great Fire of London at school and Cerys has recently finished learning about it, very enthusiastically too! So, when I found out there was an exhibition at the museum ending soon to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire, we just had to go!

Now as I have often been heard to say, one reason I like museums for days out is that they are free, and the Museum of London (https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/museum-london) is no exception. But, for this special exhibition, we did have to pay. Thank God for the bank of Mum because I couldn’t have afforded that exhibition without her.

They had it all laid out so we were almost walking through a narrow, 17th century London alleyway. The children were fascinated with the big wooden brackets that held up the upper levels of the buildings and got a real sense for just how narrow those streets were. We walked through the walled timeline which detailed just how long the fire raged and how it had spread.

Around the corner, was the main room of the exhibit. The children were in awe of all the items on display that had been saved from the flames, the massive trunks in which people had tried to carry away their most treasured possessions, and written accounts of fleeing the fire. They got to feel the difference between normal roof tiles and ones that had been burned and destroyed. Liam particularly liked the interactive computer game, to show what tools they had to fight the fire with and get them to experiment with how they would have fought the fire and if they’d have been able to save more buildings.

Across the back of this room they had a huge projection of burning buildings and set up in the middle was old fashioned firefighting equipment, leather fire helmets and even 17th century style clothing. The kids loved dressing up but realised they could hardly move in this incredibly heavy clothing. Even I tried on a leather helmet and was shocked at just how heavy it was. Imagine trying to fight a fire, wearing these ridiculously heavy clothes and the even heavier helmet! Take my word for it, it would have been seriously hard, and very hot, work!! The leather buckets weighed a lot on their own, even without being full of water, so you can imagine how much effort it would have taken to fight this fire. It really gave the children an idea of just how hard London was hit by this fire, but also of the spirit of Londoners to overcome such a disaster and rebuild their lives and homes.

The rest of the Museum

After the Great Fire exhibit, we had a wander around the rest of the museum. Starting with London back way before the stone age! The kids were fascinated by all the arrow and spear heads that had been found in the London area from hundreds of thousands of years ago, especially when they realised that a lot of them had been from around where we live. Moving through the stone age, and into the Roman era, Saxon and into Medieval the children were enthralled by all the different objects on show and the ways people had lived in the past, in the city we live in. Aimee particularly liked seeing a model of how St. Paul’s Cathedral had looked before burning down in the Great Fire of London, and even more interested to learn how long it had taken to rebuild, with some of the original design sketches on show.

Unfortunately, we only made it through to the English Revolution before the kids were moaning about being tired and wanting to go home and, to be honest, my back was starting to scream at me by that point so going home was a great idea to me. Even though there was still quite a bit we didn’t see, it will make for another great day out in the summer holidays!!!