Why you need to visit the Mayborn museum when you visit Waco, TX

One of my favorite memories as a kid is visiting the Austin Children’s Museum.  I distinctly remember trying out crutches, which were a great mystery to me having never broken my leg, and then trying out a wheelchair and discovering it was incredibly hard to maneuver.  It was not the easy ride I thought it was.

I tell you all of this because field trips are a great learning experience, even if it seems like they take time away from your studies.

 

Mayborn Museum, a “local” museum

One of our “local” (and by local I mean an hour and a half away in Waco) museums, Mayborn Museum,  had an Egyptian exhibit here recently complete with a real mummy.  Considering we made one last year, and the kids definitely remember it, we had to go see this exhibit.

 

We first explored a few other areas, for instance the communication room.  It had tons and tons of old typewriters and examples of different styles of communication, hieroglyphics, hobo code, and a few others.

What amused me most is for my kids, and most kids nowadays typewriters and switchboards are just an oddity from the past.  They don’t have any frame of reference for them.  I grew up with a typewriter in my home and used one every now and then for things.  Switchboards were “before my time” really in the sense like this one, but I always saw them in movies, and have some idea of what they are.  But my kids are growing up without a home phone, and so a landline is a weird thought to them.  It’s amazing how much technology can change in a very short amount of time.

Mayborn Museum special exhibit: Ancient Egypt, and a REAL Egyptian mummy

 

Finally after a very long camel journey we reached the Egypt exhibit.  There was quite a line for the camel ride, so they had to be patient……..

 

 

We examined an example of an archeological dig, and had a chance to guess what was happening at the dig site.  This is going to lead to an activity my kids will be doing in an hour or so.  But, I loved the idea of trying to figure out what was going on based on the artifacts found there.

 

Sadly we weren’t allowed to take any pictures back with the really interesting artifacts, but it was fascinating, and if the kids had had the patience I would have spent much longer there reading about how they studied the mummy and their theories about her.

Our Mayborn Museum field trip moved from ancient history to US history

 

We moved to pioneer times and American expansionism.  Okay, pretty much just life on a farm.  But the kids had fun enacting what it’d be like to live on a farm back then.  I especially love this picture of our friend acting like Rapunzel with her frying pan.

And this shot of Princess riding on a saddle, she had quite a lot of fun seeing how the kids played with this room.

For whatever reason all of my pictures are of Princess, but I loved this room with all of the Native American artifacts and things to try.

 

I’m gonna link this over to All Things Beautiful and her wonderful history/geography linky.