V & A Museum

We like to visit museums with Nate and normally try to look for things he will like. In the case of the British Museum it was the Parthenon Room to look at the horses. However, if we are in South Kensington we normally go to the Natural History Museum. To mix things up and try something new we went to the V&A and went to their exhibition space set aside for Digital Kids and picked up a backpack especially for under 5's to explore the museum. 

Picking up the backpack is rather painless. You fill out a few details and leave a form of identification behind to guarantee you will bring it back. Inside you will find 4 dice and a pack full of discs that make animal sounds. The object of the backpack is to go around the section of the museum (Asia section) and find the animals. 

On the outside of the pack is a map of the museum with labels where each of the animals are. Once you have found the animal, you use the dice to make the picture of the animal and then use the sound disc to hear the sound the animal makes. 

Nate enjoyed going around finding each of the animals and we spent over an hour wandering around either looking for the animals, or looking at them, talking about the sounds they make or making the puzzle. In the future if we were to use the backpack again we would also take some paper and pencils, so he could draw his favourite (or all of the animals) as another talking point. 

Butterfly exhibit

While we were in London we decided to take Nate to the Natural History Museum. When we arrived we saw there was a Butterfly exhibit, Nate saw the butterfly poster and immediately said "look butterfly".

Into the Butterfly exhibit we went for £4.50 (including a donation to the Museum) for us adults and Nate went free. It was hot inside the exhibit but there was lots to do for a slightly older child. Nate loved looking at the butterflies so long as they didn't fly too close to him, in which case he turned his head into whoever was carrying him.

On a table there was fruit laid out for the butterflies to eat which had various butterflies on. This was Nate's favourite part as there was a "butterfly with a monster eye" which he is still talking about.

Can you see the monster eye?

Within the exhibit there was lots of information regarding the three stages of the butterflies life cycle and examples of each as well to be spotted (especially the caterpillars).

We spent about 30 minutes in the exhibit and probably could have spent longer in there, although it is better suited for slightly older children as they had questions for children to answer and stamps to collect.