Rock and Mineral Weekend at the Museum

 We ended up going to our local museum for their Rock and Mineral Weekend both Friday and Saturday.  It turned out that Friday was only the “Kick-off” to the Weekend and not part of the actual “Weekend” so a few of the activities listed on the website weren’t taking place on Friday.  Since I had won a Family Membership and our admission was free, we decided to go back on Saturday.  We brought along some friends which made it even more fun for the kids.

We started our visit in the Rock and Mineral exhibit (of course). 

Lots of interesting shapes, colors and sizes…..

getting hands-on with some amethyst, some of those crystals were really pointy and sharp……

and some snowflake obsidian, nice and smooth.

 A nice dark room with a black light to show fluorescence.  Members of the local Mineralogical Society were on hand to answer questions and identify specimens.

On Friday we were able to paint some pet rocks…

and on Saturday they had a sandbox scavenger hunt.  The kids loved sifting through the sand to find fossils.  They were each allowed to keep a fossil they found and pick out minerals off a display table.  Both kids got pieces of quartz, I'm not sure what Georgie's fossil is but Vicki ended up with a really cool fern. 

 
Of course, after searching for fossils we had to go and see the dinosaur exhibit.   The exhibit isn’t that big (and is almost exactly the same as it was ** years ago when I went as a kid) but these guys love it.

There is a model of a T-Rex skull, look at those teeth….

the bones of a ornitholestes…..

footprints to jump on and follow….

and a display on the tools used to dig up bones.

There were actually quite a few other fossils down there from the various time eras but the kids spent very little time looking at them. 

Lots of fun and we can’t wait to go back again.  Two days spent running around the museum wore the kids out.  Both are asleep and it’s not even 6pm.