Shenandoah Valley Discovery Museum ~ Field Trip

Over this past weekend we took advantage of the Smithsonian Museum Day and traveled to the Shenandoah Valley Discovery Museum for free.   This was our first trip to this kids museum, and although it wasn’t as large as we’d expected the girls had a wonderful time.  

There are so many things to spark the imagination, and I particularly love all the cute signs/sayings throughout the facility.

The rock climbing wall was a challenge.  Olivia reminds me of a spider stuck to the wall.   There was a sign up by the rock wall that said “Keep your shoes on, broken toes are no fun.”   Then beside that was a sign that read “The padding at the bottom of the wall is here for your protection, but it still hurts like the dickens when you hit.”

The girls had a blast building their own roller coaster and seeing how far they could get their ball to go before losing momentum.  They quickly figured out they need a pretty drastic drop early on in the set up to make it through the loop de loo’s.

Lindsey was enthralled with this magnet table.  It was really wild watching how the hanging magnet would dance around the table as it was repelled and attracted by the other magnets.

The emergency room and ambulance were a big hit.  There was real equipment here.  Stethoscopes, gurneys, crutches, blood pressure cuffs and real x-rays made this a high usage room.  The girls camped out there forever!

This last photo gave us lots of laughs.  I think my husband had as much fun with this one as the girls did.

One thing that I didn’t like was that there was only one person working in the facility, and he was stationed at the front desk.  This meant there was nobody around to help figure out things, or do damage control.   It looked like a tornado had hit, several times over.     I’m guessing they assume that parents will help their kids clean up the mess they make, but that definitely wasn’t the case on the day of our visit.  The kids obviously didn’t mind and they had a great time. 

Another great, frugal field trip goes down in history!