A Day in Balboa Park
In Balboa Park there are fifteen of San Diego’s finest museums and one mongo sized zoo. Taking some recreation website suggestions, I wanted to check out one kid-friendly place called the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center. But since we were here in front of so many enticing museums, I thought I would try to fit in at least one other museum first.
Museum of Man
What most caught my eye was the Museum of Man. I figured maybe if I went early on in the day when the kids are most focused, I could interest them in bones and pictures of prehistoric man. This is a good-sized museum. The entrance offers a large foyer and wonderful displays of multi-story rock pillars that have been carved by citizens of the Mayan civilization thousands of years ago. Artifacts from this era were on display. This amazes me, to be looking at objects carved by people thousands of years ago, but held no interest whatsoever to an energetic five and three year old. Upstairs were skeletons of neanderthals and very life-like sculptures of what could be our earliest ancestors. The bones gave the kids slightly longer pause, but it wasn’t until we got to the area where they could play archaeologist and uncover “fossilized” footprints under sand using a small brush that they really took interest. There is also a Children’s Discovery area which unfortunately for us, remained undiscovered. It highlighted ancient Egypt. We did find the Egypt room, but did not realize there was an interactive area further on and so left after glancing at the tombs of mummies. Its too bad. This was a nice museum, but mostly aimed toward the late middle school and up crowd. I look forward to sharing my interest in world cultures with the kids, but it will have to be at a different time.
Reuben H. Fleet Science Museum
Next on the agenda was the Reuben H. Fleet Science Museum. My expectation was that we would be in and out in two hours tops. With so many museums in one area, how big could it be? You can imagine how hard my chin hit the floor when we walked in and saw this. The camera does it only partial justice, it was hard to take it all in at one time. So for the first hour we let the kids run from one exhibit to the next, each one offering some kind of hands-on opportunity that was doable for even my youngest one. The displays offered explanations that were concise and understandable even to the non-science geek (thank you!). Even I could quickly get the gist of what each station was illustrating.
After the first hour we hustled the kids into the 1pm showing of Under the Sea shown in the dome shaped IMAX screen. With this larger than life movie, I was a bit worried about how scary the experience would be to my three year old. I think the whole family agrees that the scariest part of this show was during the preview when the audience is led down a tunnel of light to experience the full effect of IMAX and Dolby sound. The movie was interesting and not full of meat-eating sharks. My little one fell asleep on my lap.
I took the sleeping Josh into the room designed for kids 5 yrs and under. Ryan and his Dad headed upstairs to build towers with the KEVA planks. The size and weight of these planks makes them surprisingly stable. A huge room was full of kids at tables making tall and wide creations. Jeff’s tall tower was based on what looked like only a few Popsicle sticks. When he and Ryan decided they were finished, Jeff was dared by another parent to begin removing each of the bottom sticks. Stick by stick they were removed, until this tower, about as tall as Jeff, was still standing on only four thin sticks. AND, the bottom sticks were in a single line all on one side of the tower, which to this day I can’t explain. But see it for yourself.
Four hours later we were starting to get hungry. By no means had we seen and done everything at the museum. There is a decent cafe on-site, but we needed more substantial food at that point. Even with growling tummies it was hard to tear the kids away. To read more about the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center you can visit the post on the city guide.
Disclaimer: I received complimentary tickets from Reuben H. Fleet Science Center. However, this post is based solely on my experience and my opinion.
How fun! We didn’t have enough time to explore other parts of the Balboa Park at all. Our visit to Reuben H. Fleet Science Museum was beyond my expectation as well. I thought it might be a quick stop 2 hours top but I think we spent closer to 3 hours there.
Okay now I really have to get to the Fleet Center. I keep hearing such great things about it and the KEVA boards are calling me. Thanks for the tips.
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