On Friday the kids had no school so we decided to go to the Grand Rapids public museum ( www.grmuseum.org ). The museum is just the right size for the kids to walk through and has very reasonable rates.

There are sections on Michigan including fish, animals, even parts of a Mastodon that was found in someone's backyard in Grandville. Gavin loves dinosaurs so all bones were dinosaur bones to him.

There were window scenes of animals as they would be in the wild. There were buttons the kids could push to hear what the animals sound like. Some of the bird calls were so spot on that I was looking around for birds before I remembered that they were imitations.

A lot of the museum was sectioned into smaller rooms. There was a larger section for Michigan in the Civil War. A room was made up to look like an old parlor and included many stuffed birds of all kinds.

Gavin loved these skeletons!

There was a small Egypt room, a room about immigrants, Native American tribes in Michigan and, of course, an area about the furniture business in Grand Rapids. There was an area that was made to look like an old fashioned Grand Rapids. There were volunteers working in some of the shops. At the print shop there was a man working on printing bookmarks. He makes all the bookmarks that are given out at the museum. He gave us a demonstration and bookmarks to keep.

There was an entire pharmacy that came from Northern Michigan. all the old boxes and bottles were there along with the long wood counters and the old cash register.

A firearms store that Henry and Mark had to check out.

There was even an old fire engine that came from Bay City. A volunteer was dressed as a fireman and gave us a lot of detail about how the old fire truck would work. It was pulled by horses in those days. During that time Grand Rapids had 4 of them. Of course, the city was much smaller then.

I've only given a small sample of what was at the museum. The kids had a great time. We did ride on the old carousal and the last room you pass on the way out is a doll room. All kids of dolls were featured plus dolls that could be played with.

The museum does have visiting exhibits. We did not go into any of the extra ones this time. However, the Titanic Exhibit is coming in February of 2013 and since Henry is quite interested in the Titanic we plan to go to it.