north museum of science and natural history

we love that our library offers free family passes to some local museums. this month we took advantage of the one to the north museum of science and natural history. instead of bemoaning the fact that we so rarely can do field trips with all 7 kids, i've decided to embrace the relative ease of keeping track of only 4 (and console myself with the fact that the oldest 3 have been to many, many more museums, even if they don't remember all of them).

it doesn't look very big from the outside, but inside there was so much to do. i feel like we went through it quickly, and we were there for over 2 hours. the discover room alone (with all those delightful labeled boxes of things the kids could touch, including animal feet, skulls, native american things, etc.). we're getting ready to study astronomy in the spring, so their whole section on that was inspiring, not to mention the traveling exhibit on blood suckers which was very well done and full of information.