Afternoon at the MOSH

Yesterday afternoon I took my kids, and one of Gabriel's friends, to the Jacksonville Museum of Science and History (MOSH).  Two and a half floors of exhibits, both living and not.  The one exhibit I liked the best was the Jacksonville history exhibit.  It chronicles life in northeast Florida from the beginning of recorded time here, up until the 1960's.  I thought that was exceptionally cool!  The kids, not so much.  I got no pictures of it because I was torn between being fascinated by the exhibit, and distracted by my children.  Ah well.  Maybe after they go back to school I'll go by myself and just wander through that part of the museum.  The exhibit took up 1/3 of the second floor.  The dinosaur exhibit, and planetarium taking up the other 2/3. 
I am very poor at planning outings, so we missed the planetarium show I wanted to see.  Next time we will plan better, and go to the planetarium show first. 
This museum has a few very cool science exhibits for the kids.  The first one we went into was the whale exhibit.  The second was the body exhibit.  The third was the local marine life exhibit, which is full of live animals, and also has a piece outside.  Nathan LOVES turtles, so the fact that they had tanks and tanks of live turtles, and tortoises, was a huge bonus for the day! 
I treat this visit as a preliminary, "lets see what's here," visit.  Next time, we will spend more time in the places we found that we liked.  The thing that really blew me away was that nobody was interested in the dinosaur exhibit!  I would have thought that that's where we would have spent most of our time! 

Entering the whale exhibit.  Nathan was not happy about how dark it was in there, and how big the whales were.

 I tried to point out the eye and the mouth of this humpback whale to Nathan, but I honestly don't think he saw anything other than a big gray blob with yellow spots here and there.

 Ahh, now this he liked.  Turtle shells.

 Walking into this big mouth was not an option for Nathan!  He was scared to death!!  He wouldn't let go of me!

 Finally, he let Gabriel take him and show him some bones.

 Nick and Gabriel discover how to make a robotic arm, hand, and fingers work, while Nathan looks on.

 Nathan ponders the inner machinations of the heart.

 The boy was fascinated by the video of open heart surgery.

 Gabriel tries his hand at the robot hand.

 Gabriel and Nick checking out some muscle tissue.

This is a stomach which expels air, like a burp.

 There's a sand box in the middle of the floor where kids could do their own dig for fossils.  It was FULL of kids, so we didn't get in there.

This is a T. Rex named Sue.  Nobody was interested in her.  :-(  Poor Sue.

 Hello Turtle!

 Looking at the turtles outside.

All in all, it was a pretty fun afternoon at the MOSH.  We will be more organized next time and spend more time in the different exhibits, and see some demonstrations.