Visit to Fernbank

Last Friday the kids, grandma Tina, and I joined a bunch of friends in my moms group on a day trip to Fernbank. This is the museum of natural history here in Atlanta.  It was such a great place.  I'm not sure I can do it justice a week later, I know I am bound to have forgotten lots of details of what we did and liked.  But I am going to try to remember everything the best I can.

When we first got there we spent a lot of time in the atrium where the big dinosaurs.  I think there were two.  One was the largest plant eating dino and the other was the largest meat eating dino.  There were also lots of birds and other ancient bones in there.  The big kids (and I think Jason) were amazed.

The new exhibit they have now is Natural Disasters.  This was the coolest part of the museum to me. I wish I had more time to spnd in there. As it was I think we were in there for about 45 minutes. And with all the kids we had in our group that was a miracle.  In that exhibit, they had hands on stuff teaching about earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and tornadoes.  In the earthquake section, the kids got to hear what different magnitude quakes sounds like from a distance of 200 miles from thr epicenter.  This is Jason listening to the sounds.

The kids could also move different plates to see the various shifts that occur.  There was a place where they could jump on the ground that measured the magnitude of their jump.  Tyler is doing that here.  Another cool thing was a computer that showed any new activity that was going on.  So we could see that in Chile they were still having aftershocks from the earthquake that very morning. I thought that part was really interesting.  The tsunami section had lots of pictures of Indonesia that were being taken while it was occuring. It also showed how a buoy warning system works in the ocean.  I can't remember much else from the tsunami part.  The volcano portion had models of the different types of volcanoes in the US.  There are ones in New Mexico, Arizona, and Washington.  The kids could touch the models and see how the earth feels in each of those places.  There was also some molten rock that they could feel.  There was a volcano simulator that the kids could turn some buttons and make a volcano occur on a big screen.  Rebecca and Abby were doing that here.

The next section was the hurricane section. It had lots of things collected from when Katrina hit in 2005.  It was mostly pictures and actual items that were saved from the flood in glass cases. There was a room where the kids could watch a short film from a local weatherman about hurricanes. In that room there was a tree that made a 90 angle from the winds of a hurricane. If you look closely in the background of this picture, you can see the tree in the corner.  In the tornado section, there were also lots of items that had sustained tornadoes.  The coolest part in this section was a room that was almost completely enclosed in big screens. On the screens you could see a tornado coming towards you, pass over you and keep going.  It was filmed with a special camera. It was so cool we watched it twice.

Another exhibit at Fernbank was a walk through time in Georgia. It featured lots of species that live in here now and in the past.  Carrie made up a little scavenger sheet for this portion of the museum. She had pictures on it that the kids could mark off as they found them in the room.  Here is a picture of Libby and Tyler with one of the dinosaur footprints. There were also dinosaurs in this section of the museum.

Next we went upstairs to the 3rd floor of the museum.  This was the kids section.  There were lots of interactive kids activities for them to do. A few things they did were feed the birds worms; pretend to fish; dress up in different things to hide into the wall; climb a treehouse and there was so much more I can't remember.  All is all we had such a great day at Fernbank. I am so glad Carrie planned this outing for us.