Scienceworks Dinosaur Day

The 2 year old and I went to Scienceworks today with the lovely Shae and her girls for Dinosaur Day.

Scienceworks is running the Explore-a-Saurus exhibit until April 2012, an interactive and fascinating display featuring, among other things, animatronic dinosaurs, a sandpit for uncovering dinosaur bones and eggs, and information about how paleontologists make their discoveries and surmises about prehistoric life.

Being museum members, we were well aware of the exhibit and it was on our list, but going on Dinosaur Day meant that we got in for free, which, being a well-known cheapskate, appealed to me enormously :-) Getting to go along with Shae and her girls was a very good added incentive to today's trip.

When discussing the day with C, I told her we'd be going to a museum with some friends.

"Who?" she said with slight suspicion.

"A lady with three little girls, C," I replied, "you haven't met them yet but you'll like them."

"OK ..." she said. Then: "Will there be dinosaurs?"

Oh yes, lamb. Dinosaurs in SPADES!

C was delighted - entranced - with the moving dinosaurs (which were, I must say, exceedingly well done). She kept wanting to come back all the time to the display of the mother Maiasaurus bending over her nest of hatching eggs. She was also madly keen on brushing the sand off the eggs in the sandpit, staring at them intently in the hope that they too would hatch. (Alas, being made of plaster, they did not).

She chattered about dinosaurs all the way home and has been playing with her little tub of plastic dinos ever since, while listening to dinosaur music and having me read My Dearest Dinosaur, Harry and his Bucketful of Dinosaurs and How Do Dinosaurs Say I Love You?

I leave you with our favourite dinosaur-related song of all ... They Might Be Giants' I Am a Paleontologist.



Dinosaurs FTW!