I recently went to check the new exhibits at the Phillip & Patricia Frost Museum of Science with my 6 and 9 year old daughters and friend Alejandra (@GirlwithGlam). I am going to be completely honest, I have been before and there wasn’t much and not so interesting. But that was probably because they were new and still working on getting exhibits ups and running. But this last time we all went, it was amazing! The new exhibits were done so nicely and the girls were so interested rather then the “quick look and walk away” mindset. I also loved that they added a hands on activity in between the exhibits which I will mention below!
We started our day at 10AM at the new Exhibit: The Power of Poison. This was and is by far my girls and my favorite exhibit in the museum! The exhibit itself was done so nicely and attractive and kept us busy. It had different poisonous things from plants, animals, chemicals and even salt! This exhibit even brought in stories like Alice in Wonderland and Snow White which had “poison” in their stories. This was fun for the girls to see and learn because they are huge Disney fans. They also showed witches and witchcraft and the “Belladonna” plant they would wrap around themselves to give them the feeling of flying. Definitely interesting information. Towards the end of the exhibit, they had 3 different scenes with 4 touch screen tablets. Each scene was something else. For example, there was a dog in the yard and something there poisoned him. It told you the dogs symptoms which you then looked around the yard and clicked on different reptiles or plants etc that have poison. We had to match the symptoms to the side effects these poisonous things did. The girls had so much fun and it kept their brains at work and doing some problem solving. This was their favorite because it was hands on.
We went up to the 4th floor to the Royal Caribbean Vista where you saw the large fish tank (from 2-4th floor) from the top! We saw some sharks swimming around and little fish. Next to that, they had other small aquariums with fish and the best one yet, sting rays! We all got to pet them and did this for about 10 minutes. It was so fun and they were slimy LOL. From there we walked around an outdoor gated area which had more fish and birds to look at. We then went into the River of Grass which is an indoor exhibit, but where the walls and floors are projected and you see what looks like the Everglades. We saw animals walking around, frogs jumping on lily pads, heard different animal noises and more. I loved this idea because for some time, it is “daytime” and then turns into “nighttime” where they give the kids these “flashlights” to hold to the screen to find animals in the dark. This was so fun for them, but its more for children 6 and under.
We then went to the new Exhibit: Da Vinci – Inventions. Now, I may sound dumb, but I thought he only did art. So this was a new learning experience for me! Little did I know he not only was an artist, but also an inventor, scientist and engineer! We saw so many remakes of things he had invented like a “helicopter” and a “war tank”. These were amazing to see! We checked out his different paintings and by far our favorite was The Mona Lisa. Kids thought it was funny (and me too!) that anywhere you walked, she was still looking at you! My youngest even took one of the staff members in this exhibit and showed him how her eyes move with her (even so he knew) and was so sweet and acted all surprised. I then saw all his sketches and findings (remakes/copy) of the human body. It was amazing to see that back in the day without all the technology we have now, he was able to find out a lot about the human body!
Right outside this exhibit, they had just set up a hands on “seashell” activity. My girls went straight to it. They showed them different types of shells and then gave them a plate of tons of different types of shells where they had to separate them by either color, size, shape, etc – totally their choice! This they had fun doing and spent about 15-20 minutes here! The staff was also very sweet and amazing with the girls!
From there, we headed to the 3rd floor which was the middle floor of the 3 story aquarium. This floor was called The Dive. It had a large room where it had windows to the large aquarium as well as plenty smaller aquariums with various types of sea life. Here we got to pet a star fish and a sea urchin!
Right outside this room was the Exhibit: Feathers to the Stars. This exhibit showed different types of things that flew like aircraft, birds and even some animals like snakes and squirrels! The best part of this room was the station where you could make your own paper plane and then use this machine that you set it on and it makes it fly around the room. My girls as well as everyone else in that room were having so much fun with this! Some paper planes barely flew and then you had some that flew across the room! My daughters also put these foam wings/boards on their arms where they had to be in front of a heavy fan and got the feeling of how it is to fly with wind against their bodies.
From the Feathers to Stars Exhibit, we went to the last part of the Aquarium which is the bottom part called The Deep. Here it was a room with a huge glass window from the aquarium where you looked up at the fish, sharks etc from the middle and top part of it. Here it was more chilled. Many, including my girls just laid on the carpeted floors and looked up. It gave this calm feeling after walking around and exploring for hours.
Right downstairs from The Deep was the Me Lab which was about the body. We didn’t get a chance to do much here as we had to leave. But the girls did go on this “dance floor” and danced around for a bit. They had music playing and it had disco lights and all. Many kids enjoyed this. As much as they all danced, I think it was more of counting all the steps being taken by the children and comparing it to different distances!
Unfortunately, we had to leave at 2:45PM, but by then, it was nearly 5 hours that we spent in this Museum! And we didn’t even do everything, not even the Planetarium! This Museum is perfect for an all day outing. Literally! And you can eat lunch here so don’t worry about food! We brought our own because Kosher diets, but they have a cafeteria and Starbucks!
All in all, I would definitely recommend this Museum to anyone! Not just children, adults too! Everyone will enjoy their time here!
The only downside of this visit was parking. There is plenty of space in the parking garage, but it is privately owned and was not cheap. It came out to $28 for almost 6 hours as my car had been parked from around 9:15 ($8 first hour and $4 each additional hour). If you can find parking around for cheaper, I would definitely do that.
Below are photos of the Museum. Sorry if some are bad. Some rooms were too dark, and even with my DSLR, it was hard capturing nice pictures. But I wanted to share how fun it was!
**Tickets were sponsored by the Phillip & Patricia Frost Science Museum**
The Stylish Mommy 