Indians and Dinosaurs and Bugs—Oh My!

Today the girls and I went with friends to the Houston Museum of Natural Science.  Since we just finished a unit on Indians a couple of weeks ago, our main purpose for going was to check out the Native American exhibit.  The exhibit was fantastic, but photography wasn't allowed!  :(  So here's the only Native American picture I have from the entire trip. 
 

As soon as we unloaded, the kids grabbed some Magnolia leaves and pretended they were feathers.  Glad we at least got this Indian picture!

Eating our picnic lunch before heading into the museum.

The kids loved these geodes!  And I loved Yvette's comparison of them to people:  We might not look like anything special on the outside, but God makes our insides beautiful when we make Jesus the Lord of our lives.

Dinosaur Exhibit

Wooly Mammoth—one of the few pics of the dinosaurs that wasn't too dark to see!

Millie and Cyrus are checking out the plesiosaurus.  This is one of the dinosaurs we sculpted and illustrated in Hannah's kindergarten, so it was fun to see its skeleton in person!

This is the same exhibit from the upstairs looking down.  The smaller one shows what it might have looked like with skin.  It was a sea dinosaur, hence the flippers.

Africa Exhibit


Run, zebra, run!  Look at Millie taking it all in!

 

This is what happens to slowpokes in Africa!



What do you get when you cross Tammy Faye Bakker with a monkey?  Actually, I thought this creature was amazing—evidence of God's creative genius!

 Entomology Exhibit

The kids at the entrance to the exhibit.



How would you like to find these babies in your cupboards?  You can't really tell from the picture, but they were each about 3 inches long!  Blech!!



Can you believe these are all beetles?  The quote was the best part of the display.  It says, "When asked what his studies of the natural world had taught him about the Creator, Scottish geneticist J.B.S. Haldane replied:
HE WAS INORDINATELY FOND OF BEETLES . . ."



The girls loved looking at the chrysalides. We even got to see one butterfly emerging! It was shocking to see how many different kinds there were and how each one was unique—more evidence of God's creative genius!



These looked metallic.



These were a rainbow of colors and spiral shaped to boot!  And what a gorgeous butterfly!!!

 

And these were mint green with a thin band of metallic gold around them.  Simply beautiful.

Butterfly Pavillion

This time we made sure to grab a butterfly identification chart before we went in.  Hannah and Rachel had a blast determining which type of butterfly they were looking at.

Notice how big this butterfly is?  (Look at the person in the background for a comparison.)  He was enormous!  (Well, for a butterfly, anyway.)  I'm sure he was every bit of 8 inches.

Here are several of the big ones resting on a tree trunk.  I thought they were decorations when I first saw them!

I'm sure this guy loved all the humidity!

Yep, they look like a pile of leaves, don't they?  Still more evidence of God's creative genius!

One last picture by the fountain on the way out!

I'd say we wore 'em out!