hands-on learning @ museums

In a previous post, I mentioned that for science this year (and probably throughout the elementary years) we've opted to do nature study, gardening, cooking, reading living books about science and visiting science museums.

We believe that in providing our children hands-on learning experiences they not only learn better, but they become excited and interested about the subject. We've also seen how this helps in reading because when they encounter a new word they can often figure it out from context because they have seen what they are reading in real life.

Many museums have free days or times and those have been helpful. We opted to purchase a contributing membership to the Museum of Discovery ($110 per year) that included free admission to museums that are members of Children's Museum Assocation as well as Association of Science and Technology Center.

We haven't used the membership as much as I would have liked, but in a different season I think we definitely would have. Still, I feel like it was good deal financially speaking.

We have visited:

The Magic House in St. Louis, MO - If you are ever in St. Louis and have children this is a must-see! Plan to spend at least a whole day! It is really awesome and well worth the admission fee (though one admission for a family would pay half of a yearly membership fee to MoD)


The St. Louis Science Center - Again, well worth the money and time invested. They treated us like first-class members with free planetarium shows, free Discovery Room entry and I think we could have watched the IMAX movie for free (but it was a little intense for our children's ages.)


Children's Museum of Memphis - While it was a nice visit, it certainly does not compare to The Magic House. One other disadvantage is that they only allow 4 people to enter free with the reciprocal admission program (The Museum of Discovery membership allows up to 7 people) and everyone age 1-100 pays the full $9 admission price. If we did not have the yearly membership, I do not think it would be worth the admission price for a whole family to go.


The Pink Palace - Nice visit, especially since it was included in our membership. We only gained admission to the museum and extra exhibits and not the IMAX or planetarium. It will be nice to go back and view the traveling exhibits. We went when there were life-like dinosaurs that moved and growled and they were kind of scary for our kids.


Though not part of our MoD membership, we also visited the Museum of Westward Expansion located underneath the St. Louis Gateway Arch. This was perfect timing as the exhibits about pioneers and such fit right into our reading of the Little House on the Prarie series.