Building Museum

We made a concerted effort to go and do an activity or museum (or two) every weekend, so that Brad could join us (the girls and I did a lot during the week, but obviously Brad couldn't join for those outings). Early on, we had quite a number of people tell us we needed to make a point to take the girls to the Building Museum and that it was a great museum for kids.

I won't say that it's not a good museum for kids, but here are my thoughts:
- It's not part of the Smithsonian system, so it's not free. It wasn't going to be a big-time budget-buster for us, but it's a little hard to choose to pay for a museum when surrounded by all the fantastic free options.

- Our experience at the Building Museum was unusual (I'll get to that), but if we had gone on a regular day, I don't think our children would have been overly impressed. They definitely found the Postal Museum and zoo to be much more fun in DC, and the activities geared toward children at the Building Museum were probably a little anti-climactic for the Boswell girls; we have an incredible science museum for children in Durham that has the same activities, so the element of novelty was missing for us.

THAT SAID, we lucked into going on a particularly exciting day: community day! We had no idea that we were going on community day, but we were definitely glad that we did. Admission was free that day, and lots of local organizations were there with activities, demonstrations, and freebies.

I don't know why all of the children look so annoyed here...but this is our double stroller + rollerboard in action (waiting on the elevator down into the metro station).

That red building is the museum.

Found some entertainment before we even got to the building...

First up: free hot pink "hard" hats

Cool interiors

Paper shingles for their bird house roofs

Real hard hats for some real life hammering

Back to plastic hats for spackling

And we met Peg + Cat!!

Craft stick and binder clip constructions

There was a really fun display on movie theaters around the country.

And doll houses!

This room of giant foam blocks is probably what most people get excited about for children. The tricky thing for us is that we have this same display at our museum at home (and we go to our science museum all the time, so it's kind of a "normal" part of life for us in Durham).

Watching the biggie girls play

They had this "construction petting zoo" set up outside, and it was darling. They had several large construction vehicles parked for children to climb on and pretend to drive.

A successful outing!

And, again, our real favorite activity in the District...

I guess my review of the Building Museum would be that we enjoyed our visit, but I don't know that I'd recommend a family with several children pay the fee to go on a regular day. I think there are probably more entertaining DC destinations. But we did get a fun family day out of it!