Dinosaur Chronicles

Can I just say that I really miss having young kids in the house? I miss the questions and excitement, and I miss the sense of adventure that always came with new discoveries. I miss the awe and wonder of the learning process. I miss the oh, so active imaginations. And I thank my lucky stars for grandchildren.

One of my favorite activities now is the one-on-one dates I take with my grandkids. Last night was an adventure with Sir S. Our local museum has a new interactive display called the Dinosaur Chronicles and the show is geared perfectly to a 5 y/o boy who, like most 5 y/o's, is nuts about the 'terrible lizards'.

I think I would like to work for the people who create these displays. They have amazing jobs. They came up with fabulous animated displays where huge dinosaurs shake their heads and roar as they flash very sharp teeth, tails wag, feet move as if walking, sometimes eyes look right at you. It's creepy and cool and thrilling to a 5 y/o.

This was pretty clever because T.Rex is surprisingly real looking and Sir S said, "hey, take a picture of me running from him," and proceeded to run in place. Smart kid. I wish I had thought of that idea. See what I mean about those imaginations?

Tables and mats were scattered throughout the display for playing with toy dinosaurs or perhaps making crayon rubbings of T.Rex or Stegosaurus. Some of the tables held templates for tracing and others held scissors and crayons for creating your own. I'm telling you it was kid heaven!


There were shelves full of books and dinosaur games, and a puppet theater where the kids could act out their own dinosaur show. You can imagine that Sir S's show involved T. Rex eating Triceratops who put up a valiant, but hopeless fight.

We found a huge mechanical dinosaur that could be moved every which way by pushing different buttons. There were bones and eggs and babies. You could pretend you were a paleontologist with your brush and look for the hidden bones. One of Sir S's favorite displays was of a downed dinosaur being attacked by raptors. He's 5, of course he would like the most gruesome display. He said, "aw, cool, he's pulled off a chunk of meat with his claws." I'm not kidding, that was way cool for him.



Even the planetarium show took you from the creation of earth through the demise of the 'terrible lizards'. Sir S loved that it 'rained' on us once. I loved watching his reactions to all that he experienced. I'm so looking forward to the next sequel of "An Adventure with Sir S".