Field Trip to the Children's Museum

I've been so busy that I haven't had a chance to update about the last field trip we went on with the kindergarten students. We traveled all the way to Incheon to the Children's Museum there. Apparently Little Brown occasionally recycles field trips since old Matt teacher showed me some pictures of the field trip they took last year to this museum. It was still pretty fun and cool.

The museum had a number of very different sections. The first was filled with lots of hands on toys, a jungle gym, some drums, blocks, this kind of thing. The kids had a great time trying them all out and trying to make patterns and stuff out of the blocks.
Ben and Brian.

Next we watched "Hansel and Gretel" in 3-D. Maybe I'm getting old but I really don't remember the part in Hansel and Gretel where they were trying to escape the witch's cottage and they had to dodge all those booby traps and run Indiana Jones style away from a giant boulder. And then when the witch's evil bird friend was accidentally changed to look just like Hansel and Gretel had to try to tell them apart so her brother could live. It's probably just my memory though.

The third section involved walking through a giant dinosaur cavern. It didn't actually have any skeletons or fossils but it did have terrifying lifesize dinosaur replicas and scary background noise. I could barely get some of my kids to walk through. I certainly didn't expect to see this display in the Children's Museum.


Lesson learned: velociraptors are not cuddly.





The next section was probably the most interesting and most museum-like. In the first room it showed an old Korean school room with an actual CHALKBOARD. Oh man, do I ever feel old! The next room showed what school is like in North Korea (which just seemed to involve white uniforms). Then we came to this large room that was supposed to show the rest of the world. This room just slayed me and possibly North American society is getting too politically correct but almost everything struck me as being at least mildly racist. It's worth it to click on these pictures and look at them full size!
We were not able to match anyone's skin color. I wonder what that means.

Everyone touched base with their home countries. It was nice to see some familiar faces, you know, people who really look like us.




I am assuming this was showing how people dress in different climates.





Then we looked at artifacts from different places in the world. Some were statues, some were carvings and then there was a section completely devoted to musical instruments.

The last area was a science based one where the kids got to do things like pump water, ride a bike and create electricity or power a propeller. There also were funhouse style mirrors.

Then it was lunchtime and the mommies had prepared an astounding amount of gimbap, fruit and pork cutlets. It was truly delicious and we all made giant pigs of ourselves.

After lunch it was time to go home but it had been a really satisfying day. Look at how happy Joi Teacher was!

Maybe for our next field trip we can visit this place. After all, it is right next door to the Children's Museum. More pictures here.