Making Happy Moments: Children's Museum of Memphis

Kraig's class and another class from his school went to the Children's Museum of Memphis on April 29th. All I can say is it was AWESOME! My mom, Chris and I went with him. We followed the bus from the school (gone are the days when parents can ride along....). We parked in the front, then walked around to the bus. His class lined up beside the bus to wait for one of the students to be gotten off...she is in a wheelchair...they were more intrigued with the lift than noticing the parents. He barely waved at us.

After the intro video, we started the activities. The first room is the emergency room....fire truck and police car and motorcyle....Kraig took Russell's hand instead of ours. Russell is his best bud from class. For anyone who missed the previous post about spring break, Kraig LOVES fire trucks. Apparently, Kraig and Russell play firemen frequently at school. So this was heaven for both of them.

In the same room with the fire truck was a police car.....

Kraig tried the back seat out, just for kicks....he'd better not spend any time in there!

There was a dress up area, complete with a dressing area, a stage and curtain and backstage area. Kraig tolerated the giraffe costume, but came to life in spongebob. He danced all over the stage, and liked opening and closing the curtain.

There was a bank stand...where Kraig wrote a check for for cash.....

And then we got to go grocery shopping. Let's just say it'll be a while before I go shopping with Kraig...as soon as we walked in, he just started putting stuff in his basket, without even looking at what it was (and there was a 3 item limit).

There was a China room...Kraig wasn't terribly interested in any of that. There was a dining area and kitchen with fake food in a wok, but another little girl (not in his class) was in there, so he didn't stay.

There was an architect area....complete with a drawing table and a computer for computer assisted drafting.

There was an automotive room

a go cart....

A beekeepr's station....in the window to the right are a couple of actual beehives!

A model of the Mississippi river, complete with fish and boats.

Gears...

Sub contractor area.....

electrical panel....

Cabinets, doorknobs, light switches, doorbells and light fixtures......he liked this part alot!

Human maze--this reminded me of a toy I used to have....it was a cylindrical column with beads in it; as you turned it over the beads would fall to the bottom and you had to tilt the cylinder to get the beads through a a series of holes in the column.

There was a dental room with a tooth puzzle....Kraig really liked the teeth!

Another big favorite was the Fed ex plane cockpit...it was even raised so when you sat in the seat, you felt like you were flying. Not the best for taking pictures....but I did pretty well, I think!

And this is the air traffic control room....

There was a model jet inside a fence type box....a button turned on some high powered fans and gears lifted the strings attached to the jet...kind of hard to describe, but maybe the pictures will make sense.

There were a couple of airplane chairs....Chris and Kraig took a break.....

We walked up steps to get up to the cockpit....the other side had a tunnel slide....Kraig typically does not like dark places, and while he did hesitate at first, he went on in and then went back up to do it again!

This is Kraig dressed up in the locker room...they had baseball and football jerseys an helmets. There was even a football jersey with the pads already in it, but it was too big and too heavy to put on Kraig.

After the activities, it was time for lunch!!!! There are picnic tables outside, so we sat out there. It was not hot, not cold, and not raining, so it was perfect! Chris took the picture of me with Kraig just before we came outside.

And then of course, the kids spent some time running around in the fields in front of the museum. One of the parents is also the PE coach, so he organized the running into a relay race.