Cincinnati Museum Center
I had mentioned in my WWII post about the Cincinnati Museum Center. Besides the Cincinnati History Museum, this historical building – Union Terminal – houses the Duke Energy Children’s Museum and the Museum of Natural History and Science. (Oh, yes, and an Omnimax Theater and Amtrak Terminal.) For a very fair price, you can choose to tour all three of the museums in one day. Below are some pictures from our day…
Besides WWII, the Cincinnati History Museum takes you through the history of Cincinnati from the earliest Native American settlers to about the 1950’s. You get a lot of history about how Cincinnati developed because of it’s position as a river town and how the Ohio River’s resources helped it grow into quite an industrial area.
This is one of Henry Ford's Model T cars.
This is a trolley that actually rode through Cincinnati. In this section of the museum, they talk about Civil Rights and how black Americans were treated during the 30's-50's.
The Museum of Natural History and Science was VERY EVOLUTIONARY based. However, we have been so well equipped by the Answers in Genesis ministry, I had few problems discussing such topics as cave development, the ice age, archaeology, fossils and such. The museum was quite nicely put together, so I’m glad we chose to go. However, if you aren’t secure in your understanding of creation vs. evolution, you’re likely to be frustrated by the abundance of “millions of years” and “Darwin” talk.
This general store was part of a section about technology advances through the years.
Eli loved flossing giant teeth in the special human body exhibit.
Eli liked playing in the sand with dinosaur models, while the big kids enjoyed the real dinosaur skeletons.
The biggest hit, of course, for Eli was the Children’s Museum! The bigger kids weren’t quite as interested, but they had fun “keeping Eli busy”. 
The ball zone is great fun for all ages!
The water zone had Eli completely soaked by the end. Ugh. But is was fun nonetheless. The big kids and I were able to make our own lock and dam system, which is something we had learned about in an earlier unit study that had confused the kids a bit.
Eli's favorite part was the construction zone!
Caleb helped the little ones load the rocks into the crane bucket for transport to a dump truck.
The museum was also offering a gooey experiment station the day we went. The children were able to play with Oobleck and make their own slime to bring home. Can you see all the little people sitting behind Mahayla? She felt pretty out of place, but handled the situation fine. All the other older children just happened to be in school! (Great for us!)
Now all we need is a little warm weather and I have a feeling the trails will be worn often.
