Dinosaurs at Thanksgiving Point

The Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point is so much fun for my kids.  We go a couple times every year.  We usually go once with an Entertainment Book coupon, sometimes with a coupon we used from a parent's Entertainment Book, and on 2 Buck Tuesdays in August when each person is only a $2 entrance fee.  Regular price is $10 for an adult and $8 for a child (ages 3-12) and free for under age 3.

This past Tuesday right after swimming lessons we drove down to Thanksgiving Point.  Of course 2 Buck Tuesdays are VERY crowded, but I was expecting that.  After finally locating a parking place I loaded Clara into her stroller and we headed in.  At only $6 for my family I didn't mind the insane number of other people also attending.  The Motion in Motion exhibit was too crowded for my kids to care about trying things out so we headed on to the paleontology room.  It shows some examples of how paleontologists find and excavate fossils.  You can also see into their lab where they are actually working on various projects at the time.  Then came our walk through the stars.  Tessa gets very nervous and had to hold on to me but Spencer loved it.  He used to be scared also, just up until last year in fact.  If you haven't been you basically walk across a short bridge in a dark tunnel with lights all around like the stars in space.  Then we entered the prehistoric zone.  As crowded as it was, we didn't spend as much time as we usually do looking at and reading about the exhibits.  But we've been there enough that the kids kind of knew what they were looking at anyway.

I got very nervous as we neared the erosion table.  My kids enjoy playing in the sand and water but we usually go when there are about 20 other kids playing and even then we can rarely find a toy dinosaur or tree to play with.  There were too many kids that my kids didn't want to crawl to the inside where the floor is raised high enough Tessa can actually reach.  They were nervous and wanted to stay right by me.  So I had to hold Tessa up the whole time with her head hanging over so she could play.  However, Thanksgiving Point was prepared for the large number of patrons as there were plenty of toy dinosaurs and trees.  I limited my children to one dinosaur and tree each but I saw kids with handfuls and didn't hear any kids crying that they couldn't find any.  The kids had fun building sand mounds for their toys, burying their toys, and just playing in water and dirt.  I tried my best to take pictures of the kids while I was holding on to Tessa.  Then after about 15 minutes of playing I finally got the idea to position the stroller so Tessa could sit on the tray and reach without me holding her up.  Instead I took Clara out and she had an absolute blast playing in the dirt and water.  She was the only one who really got wet.  They do have the water aprons to keep dry, but I rarely bother with those.

We saw all sorts of dinosaurs--Thanksgiving Point actually has the "world's largest display of mounted dinosaurs" at like 60 of them.  There are of course a couple cool looking Tyrannosaurus Rexes (Spencer's very favorite part of the museum), a Triceratops, a Pteranadon, Supersaurus, Brachiosaurus, a super large turtle looking dinosaur I don't remember the name of, Elasmosaurus, a Mammoth being hunted by a bunch of human skeletons (this one always bothers my kids--that people are trying to kill the Mammoth even though I point out the skeletons under his feet that the Mammoth is killing.  I'll be surprised if my kids grow up to be hunters--too bad cuz I'd like someone else to hunt me yummy food to eat), a saber-toothed something or other, and a reconstruction of a super big shark with a whole bunch of teeth.  I'm glad I know the few types of dinosaurs' names I do.  I'm sure my 6 year old boy knows a whole bunch more than that.  The kids love finding the picture of the hand that means they can touch the "hands-on exhibit".  While these include real teeth, bones, and cool things like that my kids' favorite is the little dinosaur you can climb and sit on.  It's also a very popular photo op.

Clara loved being able to climb on him by herself and screamed when I removed her so the next people could take a picture of their kids on it.

At the end of all the exhibits is the fossil dig area.  There are 2 different "sandboxes" (one is smaller and one is larger) where kids can use a provided paint brush and their hands to dig for dinosaur bones.  Usually when we go with the 12-20 other kids here there are about 8 non-broken paintbrushes between the two areas.  Kudos again to Thanksgiving Point for stocking up on them this time.  I think every single kid had a paintbrush and there were still some kids with one in each hand.  My kids had no problem locating paintbrushes for each of them, although if they put it down for one second someone else grabbed it up and they had to go searching for another one left alone to replace it.  Spencer was very determined to continue brushing away at one bone for about 15 minutes.  Tessa was having more fun brushing sand onto her legs and feet and using the paintbrush to tickle Clara.  Clara was in heaven.  She had sooo much fun trying to use her paintbrush just like she saw her big brother doing.  Then she had fun putting sand on her legs and toes like her big sister.  She also spent a lot of time just looking around at all the other kids.  I think more than anything she liked being able to do what she wanted without anyone stopping her.  I left the binki in her mouth to try to prevent the sand from going in while I stood outside of the digging area watching and she really enjoyed her independence.  When the bigger kids were ready to go I had Spencer carry her to me and she was literally kicking and screaming the whole way.  She kept kicking and screaming while I did my best to brush off as much sand as possible from her (I later found plenty exfoliating her baby soft parts when I changed her diaper) and placed her in the stroller.  Then she accepted defeat and calmed down while Spencer ran around trying to locate his missing shoe.  It was fun, but boy did I enjoy the quiet after we exited the building.  But now I really want to get Clara a sandbox.