Witte Museum Ice Age Exhibit

The new Ice Age exhibit opened today at our local Witte Museum. When we got the flyer in the mail, Eric was particularly interested in seeing the "saber-tooth cat", and he always likes to explain that it's a "cat" and not a "tiger". So, of course, I had to take a picture of him with the saber-tooth cat. All of the animal displays were moving, so that's why this one is a little blurry, but I thought it was cool looking over Eric's shoulder.

The exhibit was free for members this weekend, so that meant lots of people were there. This is the first time in a long time that we have been to the Witte, and it was a bit shocking to see part of the building torn away for their renovations. That also meant going into the new back entrance that was particularly muddy with all of the rain we've had recently.

This Wooly Mammoth was near the outdoor entrance. We came up to about three Wooly Mammoth's during our visit, and Eric wanted to cuddle up to each one. They aren't particularly cuddly, but he was enjoying himself anyway.

The new entrance was outdoors with a little overhead covering over the actual ticket booth. I hope they finish those renovations quickly, because visiting museums is a nice rainy day or hot summer day activity, but the outdoor entrance would make this unpleasant. It started drizzling while we were in line.

The exhibit began with a movie basically showing computer-generated animation of Wooly Mammoths and Saber-Tooth Cats roaming around and interacting as they would have during the actual Ice Age time period. There wasn't much to the movie, but Eric soaked in everything. He was also reading every plaque with information on the various creatures.

Eric couldn't remember what this creature was called, but he said that, "It's probably a 'Terror Bird'." Can I just say that I don't know what that is? He seemed very sure about it. All the animal exhibits were bigger than what the info plaques stated that they were supposed to be. That made them seem more formidable. I got one picture of a Giant Beaver that was really scary big--bigger than Eric, when the sign said that they were supposed to be smaller than Eric.

It was tough getting some of these photos because there were SO many people and the mood lighting was so poor. I forgot my big camera. I'm so used to not carrying it around that I actually forgot all about it until we got to the museum and I saw the low lighting. We don't have a lot of sports events to go to anymore, with soccer being over and Natalie still not swimming.

Eric and I were going at a slower pace than Natalie and Patrick. He read every single sign, sometimes twice. There was also a Members Activities Area where he squirted water onto a block of ice (with some other kids) to reveal a toy Ice Age animal. We spent a few minutes there because he really wanted to see what animal was in that block of ice. The activity was supposed to show what erosion does to reveal the fossils left behind.

After the Ice Age exhibit, we visited the kids' favorite area in the museum, the HEB Treehouse. It's not actually a treehouse, but it is a tall building that extends up into the many trees on the property. There are lots of hands-on activities there, and they had some new activities since the last time we were there.

Eric started off at this activity where it basically filmed him running a short distance, then it displayed how fast he was going and how long his stride was. He kept wanting to do it over and over again. His fastest speed was 11.2 mph with a 3'11" stride. It also calculated an energy score which it didn't explain. It just gave the number "5.0" as the "energy score".

One of the activities that I think might have always been there (or at least the kids have all done this activity before) where they try to pull themselves up using a pulley system. The point of the activity is that the more pulleys, the easier it is to lift yourself up. He had a fairly easy time pulling himself up using the four-pulley system, but he could barely manage to go up at all when he used the two-pulley system.

I took one picture of Natalie and Patrick. Natalie had a project this past week where she needed photos of various family members, including herself. She couldn't find one she liked with her and Patrick, mostly because she didn't like her hair. She didn't like her hair in this one either. She had braided her own hair, and she thought it looked like she didn't have any hair in this photo because it is all down her back. Really?!!

I took this photo of Eric using the binoculars-type gadget, because he was really getting into weird contortions to be able to look really high and really low. In the end, I just laughed because he said he couldn't really see much. He really looked like he was getting into what he was looking at.

Honestly, Eric could have spent the whole afternoon at the museum, but we wanted to go eat lunch. He spent only a few minutes in this interactive water feature area before we made him leave. We had a great time at the Witte Museum. There are several new exhibits coming in the next few months, so we'll definitely take advantage of our family membership and go again soon.