Days Out...

The Manchester Museum 

Yesterday I took Aum to The Manchester Museum, as it is half term this week. Because lots of the children are off, there were loads of cool exhibits and interactive things for them to do which made it more entertaining that usual. The first section we looked around had an experiment that you could do, where you had to shine an ultraviolet torch onto clues to ascertain which prehistoric person the skeleton belonged to. If you got all the questions right and chose the right skeleton, you got some stickers and a pencil, which obviously Aum was thrilled about!

Next we went to the Ancient Worlds section, which had lots of aborigine masks and weapons, pottery and of course, the Egyptian mummies. There was the chance to make your own mask or Grecian plate, but Aum doesn't particularly enjoy crafty type things, so we escaped that and went to look at all the stuffed animals in the Nature Discovery and Living Worlds areas. They had a number of adapted exhibits, in particular I really liked one about peace that had lots of paper swans dangling on strings from the ceiling, it looked really pretty and had quite an impact.

After we had seen the stuffed animals, we proceeded into the Live Animals bit, where there are lizards, snakes, creepy crawlies, and my personal favourite - the frogs! It is always a bit of a challenge spotting the animals in their enclosures, but it adds to the experience I suppose.

By this time we had been wandering around for a couple of hours, and Aum was getting a little restless, so we stopped in the cafe for a drink and cake. I had the chocolate brownie which was beautiful, genuinely one of the nicest I've had, whilst Aum opted for a cookie with multicoloured Smarties in. We drove home afterwards to avoid the Manchester rush hour traffic as it was edging towards 5pm. It was a really nice day out, and you can't beat a free museum for value for money!