Revisiting the Museum of Life and Science in Durham

Even though we are members, it has been quite some time since I went with my kids to the Museum of Life and Science in Durham. My husband took the kids a couple of times in the past year to give me a break, but I had not been back myself. We went for a visit last week.

This is probably our favorite museum to visit in the Triangle area, and even though we have been going back periodically since my kids were preschoolers, I had not seen some of the newer things that have been added, so it was wonderful to discover some new things in an old stomping ground.

When we go, we usually have to pick and choose what to see because there is just so much to do there. On this last visit, we headed outdoors first to check out the new "Into the Mist" area. This was pretty darn neat! It looks like the area isn’t quite finished, but there are cool tunnels to go through, astro-turfed misting areas to run in and out of, and even a sand box to get dirty in while also getting damp. There are plenty of benches for the grown-ups, which is a big plus in my book! It was a pretty hot day, so we ended up just being hot and damp instead of cooling off, but I think cooling off is pretty much the idea.

After checking out the playground and water area, the dinosaur trail and the misting area, we headed back inside (skipping the butterfly house, zoo area, wind area, train, and petting zoo).

We had fun with the kapla blocks as usual. If we lived in Durham, I think I might take them every week just to play with the Kapla blocks! It's pretty neat to have a whole room of them to build with. We have a small box at home, but I don't think I could ever afford to buy enough.


Next we zoomed past the weather center and discovered the Math Moves exhibit outside of the Native Animals wing. This was very neat, and I think a wonderful place to go to illustrate various math concepts in a fun way.

Graphing movement with a friend.

Frequencies, graphs, shadows, the scaling of things, and balancing weights are all part of this exhibit.

Just off this area we discovered the Contraptions room.

 Oh… My… Gosh! 

We spent an entire hour in here. It is a room filled with just a bunch of things like pipes, pulleys, funnels, balls and the like, and the kids are encouraged to "build something that does something". There are videos on the wall of various Rube Goldberg contraptions made there, and Jessi was able to come up with a short one with a bit of work.

 I will caution that if you are in there and it happens to be busy and crowded, it can be a little frustrating. Kids have a tendency to keep showing up, taking the supplies and generally trying to “Help”, which was a bit frustrating for my kids, though they were good sports about it.

Upstairs is the technology section, and I realized that these were some of the same things I had seen at the Tech Museum in San Jose. I think it was all, quite honestly, a lot more well used and not quite as clean and sparkly as "The Tech", but it's still neat to use the video wall that shows things pouring onto your shoulders off of your shadow, and do computer-based painting. There are demonstrations of optical illusions, volume tests, mosaic creating, and more. Again, very educational and a great place to go to round off a math or science lesson.

When I say this Museum has pretty much everything, I really mean it. It seems like they keep adding things as well. There is stuff about space travel, stuff about the human body and microbes, stuff about the functional anatomy of various animals, a big ant colony, and a little play area for smaller kids. 

The Museum also has classes that it offers to individuals and groups. You can find a current listing here. 

It was a really great way to spend a summer day, and my only wish is that we lived a little closer so we could go more often. If you have a day to kill with the kids, or need a place to finish off a lesson, I definitely recommend it.