Science Museum of Virginia

Now that I have a full-time job with a regular schedule, I only work one Saturday each month. That means we have time on the weekends to do fun things like go to Richmond to the Science Museum of Virginia!!

Richmond is 50 miles from Fredericksburg and we can take Interstate the whole way, so it doesn't take long at all to get there and it is no problem to go down for the day.  It is pretty great to be located in between Washington, D.C. and Richmond, it gives us a TON of things to do!

The Science Museum of Virginia is housed in the old Union Station, a building that is on the National Registry of Historic Buildings.  It is beautiful inside and out and the exhibits in the museum had us all marveling at the wonders of science and nature.

As soon as we walked in the door we were greeted by an enormous example of a Foucault Pendulum.  That really impressed the girls!

The pendulum hanging from the dome at the museum's entrance.
This photo is taken from a higher floor.

Playing with physics experiments...

It was a lot of fun to see bugs and butterflies under a microscope, to see their furry legs and (kind-of scary looking) mouths.

The grown-ups had as much fun exploring
as the kids!

Mostly, the girls led the way and jumped from one thing to another, free to explore.  Every once in a while I tried to turn something into a teachable moment...

Here I am explaining to Anja that what she just saw in the microscope was dandelion fuzz ("you know, Anja, that stuff that you blow and make a wish")...

And here she is saying "I know, Mom" and running off to the next thing she wants to see...

Astronaut Elise!

Imagining life on the space station.

The variety of displays at this museum was fantastic.  We got to explore and find out about healthy foods...

Anja gets to see how her balance is...

Checking out how our joints move...

This machine scanned an x-ray of a human body and explained how it all works...

We watched Rat Basketball (rats trained to put a mini-basketball into a mini-basketball hoop) then learned a bit about rats (even in captivity, they only live 2- 2 1/2 years) and got to pet them.

The animatronic triceratops was VERY cool...

Probably the part of the museum the girls liked best was the Live Animal Lab, where there were tarantulas, amphibians, snakes, and other reptiles.  These girls have been fans of snakes for years!