Butterflies!

We recently had the chance to take our five-year-old to the Natural History Museum in London.  We actually had to queue up outside to even get into the museum!  There were lots of families there, and it was nice to see that a museum was such a popular attraction.

Inside there were a lot of good displays, and Miriam ran back and forth in excitement looking at all of the cases.  Her favorite was the whale.  There are several whale skeletons and a life-size model of a blue whale.  I'm pretty sure our house could fit inside of it.  There was also a fantastic new section on dinosaurs.

The highlight of our visit, though, was the butterfly house outside.  The temporary special exhibit, Sensational Butterflies, really was sensational.  There were thousands of butterflies of all varieties, ranging from tiny brown ones to silk moths so large and colorful they looked like kites.  It was absolutely delightful to have so many butterflies flying everywhere around you (and sometimes landing on you).  There was also a great educational trail through the butterfly house.  Every few yards there was a little station that taught kids something about butterflies.  They were very hands-on and included both information and a chance to try things out themselves and observe butterflies.  There were special lenses, for example, that you could look through to see as a butterfly sees.  We all loved it, and I have to admit that I learned things about butterflies that I had never known before.

Butterflies are a great topic to get kids excited about science, and you can encourage butterflies around your home as well with butterfly feeders or butterfly attracting plants.  We have buddleias, for example, that always have butterflies around them in the summer (unfortunately the caterpillars seem to like eating up our gooseberry bush first).