Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Treasure Exhibit - Missouri History Museum


Last week we visited the new exhibit "Treasure" at the Missouri History Museum.

It sounded like it was going to be pretty exciting...I envisioned an exhibit filled with unearthed (unsea-ed) treasures and pirate artifacts (Bluebeard's beard perhaps?).

I was disappointed.

The exhibit is more of an inter-active play area for children...which of course my kids enjoyed.

We went on Tuesday when the exhibit is free for St. Louis City and County residents...and free is about the price I'd expect to pay for what I saw.

The boy loved the "video game" where you shoot a cannon at a passing pirate ship and try to sink the ship. But I'm not sure I like the idea of taking my kids to the museum only to have them be sidetracked by playing a video game (which really had no educational value).


The girl enjoyed panning for gold and other precious stones (they are allowed to keep one rock).

The exhibit room was almost empty when we were there - Tuesday around 3:00 PM - so that was great. Being that there are not that many activities I cannot imagine how unpleasant it would have been with a group of 30 or so children in there at the same time...all trying to do the same thing.

There are a lot of write-ups on pirates and treasure hunting posted on the walls...my theory is that kids will rarely read those things, rather they'll race to the cannon shoot or the medal detecting area (problem the large items that set off the metal detector are not really hidden).

This exhibit seemed better suited for the Magic House than the History Museum...at least from an adult perspective.

After visiting "Treasure" - we checked out the World's Fair Exhibit and Seeking St. Louis Exhibit...both are worth seeing.

2 comments:

CanadianGrandma said...

Panning for gold would be fun even for adults!

Edi said...

well the gold I think was only tiny bits of fools gold...and I don't know if there was any real value in the "precious" stones they found. But definitely fun for the kids.