Indianapolis Children's Museum Mini-Vacation

Well, we decided to take to small family vacation to Indianapolis, IN this Thursday to meet up with Mr. Prince's brother, D. I've been wanting to visit the zoo and museum all summer, so with a free family day on Thursday, it was the perfect opportunity! We headed out a little behind schedule that morning. We had to stop by Target to get some flip flops because all the klan has grown out of their water shoes. I decided we don't use them enough to purchase more at full price, because most of them I've gotten at garage sales, and flip flops we can use outside of water activities. So, after 45 min of shoe shopping and MommyK getting distracted in the $1 isle, we finally got on the road. (See the fun homeschool supplies we found at Target on this post!)

We arrived around 1:30 and met up with Uncle D at Washington Park. I had looked up parks to find a splash park in the area, but this one was a little disappointing. It just seemed old and not well kept up. The kids had fun though! Boo Boo liked the "pool" of water in the middle. He doesn't really like getting splashed, so this was actually a perfect water area for him.




We were there about an hour and we needed to get going. We had to eat dinner and be done before 4pm because the museum was only open 4-8pm and I didn't want to waist an hour of our time eating there. I got the kids dressed, did the girls' hair and we found a local KFC.

We arrived to the museum around 4:30. We were backed up on Meridian Street for at least 20min because of everyone trying to park for the free day. It was crazy!

The museum was fun, but I'm sure glad we went on a free day. It was not worth the $60 we would have spent coming on a regular admission day. I feel like it lacked a lot of educational value. The dinosaurs were probably the most educational. They had some videos on the duckbill dinosaur and they had some hands-on things to do. The kids got to dig up "fossils" in one area and also got to see real people digging real fossils out of rocks from South Dakota. We didn't do all the hands-on things because the kids seemed overwhelmed with all the people and we still had the whole museum to see.




These next two were statues outside of the zoo...very cool!


We also went to the Planetarium, which you can't take pictures of. They showed the Indiana sky for yesterday and showed all the constellations and planets you can see with your bare eyes. They also showed how to find the big and little dipper, north star and a few other constellations. But, they were supposed to teach about an eclipse, meteor showers and the planets and for some reason didn't cover any of those topics. Sid the Science Kid (and MommyK) left disappointed in the show.

They had a few other exhibits we visited, but I just wasn't impressed with any of them. They had one on Anne Frank, Ruby Bridges and Ryan White that was probably really good for older children, but we didn't go in there with our little ones. So, overall I'm not sure if I would recommend the Indianapolis Children's Museum to a homeschool family looking for some educational fun with science. But, it was a great day for us with Uncle D and worth it for that alone!

Here Boo Boo is enjoying the dead stuffed animals at the museum. He kept saying, "Kitty!" HA!