Dinosaurs of China

Over the summer we visited the Dinosaurs of China exhibit in Nottingham. It was great, a beautifully laid out museum with wonderful information and clarity of purpose.

I loved learning about the links between birds and dinosaurs and so did Pickle and Penguin. The fossils they had were amazing and clearly showed the features of dinosaurs reflected in modern birds.

They also had a fantastic tent outside with perfectly pitched activities for the kids to extend their learning through playing with various resources.

All in all a wonderful day and learning experience. Did you take any interesting trips over the summer? I would love to hear about them. Until next time. x

30 Days Wild - Day 24

Today we had a very busy day. We visited the London Transport museum which means most of the day was spent on trains and looking at trains and buses. But looking at public transport and changes to the ways we have traveled, including the changes in pollution I am going to count as a win.....

We had a nice train ride into London, looking out of the windows at gardens and hedges, trees and plants. It was a lovely ride and we saw plenty.

It is not quite wild wild but it is pretty modern wild and Pickle and Penguin had a total blast. If you haven't visited the London Transport Museum and you live in the vicinity, go. It is a great day out and perfect for our two, ages 3 and 1. They have things to look at, things to climb on and dress up in, things to drive and sit in. It is really great. Really.

Fossil Hunting

So.....one of the things we did recently was go on a very special trip! Pickle wanted to go fossil hunting, he is totally dinosaur crazy and kept asking to go Fossil hunting and it was hard to explain to a 3 year old why he is unlikely to find fossils in Hertfordshire.

So we went on a lovely little mini holiday to the Isle of Wight and it was AMAZING. We had the best time and we found real fossils on our two fossil hunting trips. Pickle and Penguin had a lovely time and Pickle is so proud of his dinosaur bone finds.

So these are pieces of hipsolophodon bone, Iguanodon bone and the big lump is a piece of theropod thigh bone.

Pickle found the thigh bone and I could tell it was a good find when the paleontologists jaw hit the floor. She asked if he had just picked it up and scrabbled for her camera to take a photo. Later when we visited the fossil museum another paleontologist took some more photos of the bone and showed us some marks on the surface which he explained were tooth marks. Eeek, exciting.

We saw the footprint casts on the beach and were told a lot of information about the rocks and the food prints. I remember bits and I have to say I found it quite fascinating. Our guides were fantastic and we all had a great time.

Before Pickle was into dinosaurs I knew just a few, I have learnt so much from him and from his interests. We have really thrown ourselves into the dinosaur things as a whole family and I love it. I really love the dinosaur thing, it is amazing, truly amazing.

We visited Dinosaur Isle museum and Dinosaur Farm, both are really interesting places with a lot of information about discoveries on the island. Pickle particularly liked the models set out to play with a Dinosaur Farm and Penguin loved the tooth sieving activity they had there. I must have a look at setting something up similar at home...

Dinosaur Isle has a lot of interesting displays of fossils as they were found in situ and Pickle was particularly enamored by the animatronic dinosaur demonstration. Both are well worth a visit for the dino enthusiast!

Until next time.....