Natural History Museum visit
Posted by DavidM in Family plan | 21 December 2006
It was the children's first day off school yesterday so we took them into London - by train of course.
We'd been watching the BBC's Planet Earth series which is spectacular and one of the animals on there was the Blue Whale. The kids wouldn't believe how long it was and I remembered that the Natural History Museum in London has a life-size model which I thought was enormous when I was small. So we decided on a visit.
I was really impressed with the museum. It's in a fantstic old building - the architecture in the main hall itself is worth a visit and is like something out of a Harry Potter movie. There are exhibits on everything from the formation of the earth, dinosaurs, birds, reptiles, primates and all the usual animals through to the one we were looking for - the blue whale.
I was pleasantly surprised that the blue whale is still very impressive and elicited 'oohs' from my children. Hopefully when they're my age they'll remember it like I did.
All through the museum are gentle reminders that we're harming these animals. For example there's a map with 200 lights on showing the population of 200,000 blue whales in 1966. Press a button and only 3 lights remain for the current population.
There's also a small area about the future and our impact. I was looking forward to this but didn't think it was as good as it could be.
Overall, the Natural History Museum is an excellent place for children to see a range of animals, read about their environment and how it is under threat and learn about the world and how it has evolved. It also reminded me why I'm making the changes in our lifestyle.
And it's all completely free!
