Skip to main content

A Birthday & a Visit to Discovery Park of America


This week has been full and fun!!  We began Mr. B's 10th birthday celebration on Sunday (a day early) with our special meal out with my parents and sister (my parents are so awesome to take us all out on each birthday!).  Mr. B picked Chili's this year.    

On his actual birthday, Monday, he opened his gifts here at home.  Then we went to Chick-Fil-A for lunch (his total fave!) where we also enjoyed a birthday cookie cake.  Yes, celebrations around here involve LOTS of good food! :)

Then Monday evening we drove to Union City, TN to spend the night and visit the Discovery Park of America on Tuesday.  The whole family went and we had SO much fun!!  



If you have never heard of the Discovery Park of America it could be because it's practically brand new!  It's been open only about a year and a half.  It's located in a small town about 3 hours west of Nashville but it is well worth the drive!  And the ticket prices are incredibly reasonable for a museum/park of this size.


This place is massive!!  It offers state-of-the-art exhibits in so many areas: Energy, Enlightenment, Military, Native Americans, Natural History, Regional History, Space, Science, & Technology, Transportation, and Children's Exploration.  And that's just what's inside!!

Outdoors there are 50 more acres to explore!  There is a substantial 1880's settlement, a huge barn showcasing historic farm equipment, a mill ridge that includes a grist mill, blacksmith shop, and a one-room schoolhouse.  There is Freedom Square that depicts a typical main street in American in the early 1900's.  The depot is a replica of a station in the 1800's plus vintage train cars to explore.  And the chapel is over 100 years old and has been relocated to the grounds.  They also have lovely gardens to walk through.  

Our whole family thoroughly enjoyed visiting here!  It was so nice to have indoor (read: air conditioned) spaces to explore in between walking around outside (read: rather warm summer day).  When you go, I definitely recommend planning to spend the entire day.  There is just so much to see!  They have a fairly reasonably-priced cafe on the grounds so you can just take your lunch break there if you'd like (we did and enjoyed it).  

They also have special exhibits that cost a bit extra, such as the earthquake simulator, the starship theater, and the observation tower.  We only purchased tickets for the earthquake simulator and it was definitely worth it.  You go inside a round room with a 180-degree screen where they tell the story of the New Madrid fault in this region and you get to experience what being in an earthquake might feel like.  (Having been in a few earthquakes myself, the simulation wasn't very realistic but the film was definitely worth it).


All in all, it was just a lovely day!  So if you live anywhere near western Tennessee or you're passing through the area, this place is a must stop!!  You will not be disappointed, I promise.  

Disclaimer: I received nothing in exchange for this "review" of the Discovery Park.  We just liked it that much :)  

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Reading Game: A Review

I was excited to receive this review product recently, thinking my 1st-grade-son could really benefit and enjoy it a lot. And I was right! He is having so much fun with this game. The Reading Game is a fast-paced memory card game using words. The game comes with 6 sets of memory cards with 6 corresponding readers. The idea is for you and your student to play memory with each set of cards (playing 6 rounds with each set), after every 2 rounds your student then reads 2 test sentences to see how he is retaining the new words he is learning. After the whole set has been played, he is then ready to read the corresponding reader...and has learned 30 new words! By the time your student has played every set of cards and read every reader, he will have learned 180 words. Of the 25 most common English words, 23 are on that list; of the 50 most common words, 42 are on that list. So this little game of reading really does prepare your student well. The readers are illustrated with cute
Post a Comment
Read more

The Making of an Egyptian Death Mask

We are learning all about the ancient world this year with Story of the World I and loving it! We've been learning a lot about Egypt, of course, which is completely fascinating. Most recently we have studied the New Kingdom of Egypt, which includes the story of King Tut. So we decided making an Egyptian death mask in the style of King Tut's would be a fun project. First since it was too cold at the time to paper mache in the garage (it probably would have frozen instead of dried-ha) and it was too messy to do it in the house, we decided to pick up a couple of cheap craft masks at Hobby Lobby. Next we cut out cardboard shapes to complete the shape of the death mask, attaching them with hot glue. Vince even put a little detail on the *beard* with the hot glue per The Princess' request. Then the kiddos started to paint them with this metallic gold tempera paint. It worked okay for the cardboard, but would not coat the plastic of the mask. We thought maybe a second coat
23 comments
Read more

Door Hanger Chore Charts

My kids have had a chore chart for a while.  It's one of those magnetic boards and they share it.  However, it's not by their rooms and often they (and I) forget to update it.  Plus it's a little bulky.   When I saw the concept of a door hanger chore chart on Pinterest, I loved it!  It was compact, right there were the kiddos could see it coming out and going into their rooms, and it costs almost nothing to make.   I headed over to one of my favorite stores: Hobby Lobby, of course.  They  have these little wooden door hangers for .79.  I also grabbed a couple of packets of decorative buttons for $1.99 each.  I already had the clothes pins and the paint so those cost me nothing.   I began by painting the door hangers (I used tempera paints because that's what I had).  Then I grabbed a fine point Sharpie and the clothes pins and started writing chores on them, making sure to write them correctly so they will clip on the right direction.   The left
17 comments
Read more