Night at the Museum

Steve & I finally redeemed our Night at the Museum voucher which was, essentially, a sleepover for 30 of our nearest & dearest at Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History.  Under the watchful eye and educational expertise of the Smithsonian's Early Enrichment Center staff, we experienced a night we'll not soon forget (and that hopefully our 4 & 6 year olds will remember, too!).  After countless emails, phone calls and finding an agreeable date 30 of us had free we selected a night for late September to experience The Natural History Museum After Dark.



We quickly realized starting with the simple act of driving onto the museum grounds that this was already something unique as we watched the metal pylons guarding the rare-in-downtown-DC-parking-lot sink down into the ground and we gently steered our vehicle past the guard gate and into one of the prized (FREE!) museum parking spots.  Gathering our belongings (I affectionately dubbed my husband Sherpa Steve...see photo below for visual explanation) we headed down the sidewalk in the cooling dusk air towards the front entrance to the famed museum.

Upon entering the heavy bronze & glass doors guarding some of our nation's most treasured artifacts of natural history we were greeted by our guide for the next 24-hours of adventure, Dr. Adamson, along with our 26 adventure-seeking friends anxiously awaiting for our night to begin.  A no-nonsense kind-of-guy, as to be expected from a real life Smithsonain scientist, we discarded our belongings and were instructed to head towards our first adventure of the evening, a private viewing of the IMAX film "Born to be Wild".  A wonderful film following the lives of two conservationists, one in Kenya working with orphaned elephants, and another working half way around the world with orphaned chimpanzees.  One of the highlights of this experience was watching the 4-year-olds in our group leap out of their seats and grab with every ounce of their being at the baby chimpanzees and elephants looming out towards us with big soulful eyes and tender movements.  One little observer was so into it that his oversized 3D glasses flew off his face as he repeatedly reached out to try to touch the baby chimpanzee sitting on the floor of a wooden hut looking soulfully out into our IMAX audience.  

We then headed down the eerily empty and dimly lit hallways with echoing footsteps towards Bone Hall where Dr. Adamson provided our children with a mammal and bone tutorial and guided us through a bone scavenger hunt where we identified what part and to which mammal our mystery bone belonged.

My scavenger hunt team, Madeline, Emma, Sophia, Andrew & Fie (not pictured).

Following our scavenger hunt we had a quick snack and headed to our next activity located in Mammal Hall.

Here the children learned about adaptations and surveyed the animal exhibits for examples of adaptations as well as sketching the examples.

Andrew particularly loved this part and was quite enraptured with the whole sketching of animals activity.  He also enjoyed the nocturnal animal exhibit in which one shines a flashlight into an exhibit and magically a pair of red, green or yellow eyes appear from the dark shadowed boxes.

Brandon was happily running from exhibit to exhibit with his friend Carson as they pretended to be adventurers, then ninjas then adventurers again throughout the night.  An hour of glow sticks and flashlights and then we were off to bed for a restless night in the Museum.

The next morning we groggily departed knowing that, along with our children, we were able to experience a magical once-in-a-lifetime Night at the Museum.