As far as museums go, little gosling has taken to visiting repeatedly the ones concentrating on things that move: trains, trams, cars, planes. Whilst we’re yet to visit the tram museum (only open in the afternoons), we’ve seen the others at least twice each over the past months. Great opportunities for quality time together in an instructive, exciting, playful setting and for little ones to use energy. This is particularly true for us when wether makes us less inclined to spend time outdoors during the weekends.

The car museum (“Autoworld”) is accommodated in a big hall with plenty of space. This allows little gosling to run around, which is what he mostly does, on fast forward without much chance of knocking down fragile exhibits. It displays a varied collection of over 250 European and American automobiles from the late 19th century to the 1990s. It is notable for its collections of early and Belgian-produced vehicles and several limousines belonging to the Belgian royal family. Interestingly, there are corners displaying horse drawn carriages, as well as mechanical workshops and different engines. 

There’s also a corner dedicated to the French comics’ character, Michel Vaillant, featuring an F1 real size car maquette. This was obviously the highlight of our first visit. What can be better than getting into a car and pretending to drive? If one does not take into account climbing on to the wheels or trying to make them turn. Of course, there was time for drawing, snacking and reading a story.

First time around we looked at sizes of cars, wheels, steering wheels, comparing them. Most of all, we played at identifying their colours. The second time we went, he went ahead and we followed. He would stop in front of a car, pointing and asking: “What is this car called? How fast can it go?” Brand of the car, year of fabrication and, most importantly, the maximum speed it could reach. We compared the size of cars and their lights and identified the convertible ones (“this can only go in summer, it has no roof”). 

A temporary exhibition of racing cars attracted most of our attention. Little gosling loved the sound of the Italian brands . He was completely in awe with the big numbers I blurted out for the maximum speed they could reach. 

We hardly ever cover the entire museum in one visit, which is ok. The aim is to stay as long as he is enjoying the experience, but not long enough for him to get tired. The ideal duration would be around an hour, but we can hardly stick to it. Little gosling gets overly excited about trips to the museum and insists on seeing everything.

Make time for snacks and reading

After the initial burst of energy and running around, it is pretty quickly that I hear “Do you have something to read? Do you have to eat?” We never leave home without snacks. I find it important we make some time half-way through the visit for a snack break. As a result, we avoid tiredness and hunger setting in and communication difficulties. We usually take along a combination of fruits (banana or bite sized strawberry or apples), nuts (cashew, pistacchio, peanuts), cubes of cheese and salami and bretzels or corn cakes. In less restrictive times, we take advantage of the museum cafeterias to enjoy a hot chocolate and a biscuit or a sandwich. 

“Tia Isa wants a car”

Equally, I always carry picture books in my bag when we go out. We never know when we may feel like reading ;). The first time we read “Tia Isa wants a car”. This, as it turns out, is the our only story featuring a car.

I loved the story the first time I heard it read aloud by Meg Medina on Julie’s Library podcast. An immigrant family: aunt, niece, uncle, working to support their loved ones back at home, on the island. Reminiscing about their house by the beach and dreaming about the day, soon, when they will be all together again in their adoptive place. The aunt wants a car, green like the ocean, with wings like a swooping seagull, to take them all to the beach. Little gosling loved that idea: to get a car to take us to the beach! The niece secretly starts doing small chores in the neighbourhood, to put aside money to help her.

It’s a wonderful, heartwarming story about family, separation, longing, nostalgia, kindness, community, effort, the value of work, joy. A touching introduction into the life of immigrants. An emotional perspective of being far from the loved ones, whilst constantly having them present, in mind and hearts. I found it incredibly moving that first thing they did upon getting into the car was sticking a photo of the entire family. 

We definitely need more stories featuring cars and/or driving. And someday soon, we’ll watch “Cars” together :P. 

Little gosling loves to spend time in the driver’s seat of our car, “Zambilica” (in English, “small hyacinth”). He emphatically tries to turn the steering wheel and touches the commands, pretending he is driving. This is his ritual for a few minutes every time we come back from a car ride. When he grows up, he would like to drive us around, with daddy and I taking turns sitting in front, next to him. 

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The second time, we paused a bit more on some of the interactive elements of the Dinosaur Gallery. The virtual moving Pachycephalosaurus was still an object of fascination. Therefore, taking turns, his daddy and I employed a little trick to try and make little gosling feel a little bit less scared of it. I sat in front of him, on the specially designated spot and responded to its every move with a roar and a claw-like hands movement of my own. It must be designed to play this game, since it seemed like it stopped disconcertedly, wondering every time I did that. I kept doing that defiantly and very vocally until it smashed the virtual glass panel that separated us. I repeated the trick several times whilst little gosling came closer and closer to me and started mimicking me. It frightened him less and less, although the smashing still made us all jump :)))). 

We played at identifying the dinosaur skeletons (and marvelled at the very long tail of the diplodocus) and matching the skull molds to the dinosaurs. We played with the levers mimicking the power and easiness of movement of the femur of upright vs. sprawling posture dinosaurs. We measured our heights against that of some of the dinosaurs. 

When little gosling asked to take a break and rest for a moment and looked up at me: “mummy, do you have something to read?” I brandished with a proud smirk a new acquisition: Giles Andreae and David Wojtowycz’ “Mad about dinosaurs”. It was a surprise I had held in store just for this occasion. We quietly sat down and read all the quatrains in the book, looking around for the corresponding dinosaur skeletons. 

Much like the other books in the “Mad about..” series, this one describes in verse and super-colourful and suggestive illustrations twelve types of the most known dinosaurs, including the T-Rex, the triceratops, the stegosaurus, the diplodocus, the brontosaurus or the velociraptor. The star of the book was however the lesser known (to us) ankylosaurus, whose body is protected by an armour, so if you’re a T-Rex and unwise enough to attack it, you’ll end up breaking your teeth :))). Consequently, from then on, on our games of “if you were an animal, what would you be?”, the ankylosaurus has come up repeatedly. Why? Because he is obviously not afraid of the fierce T-Rex, like most of us would be if it was still roaming the Earth. The short poems and funny illustrations make for a playful and thoroughly enjoyable learning, for both mummy and little gosling, with just a nutshell of information easy to absorb by young minds. 

The reading finished, we moved on to “The living planet” exhibition, identifying animals (“I like best the…., because it is….”, pointing to them) and dwelling on the different habitats. Great learning opportunity all the photo visuals and the regrouping of animals per habitat. 

Little gosling sat down for another rest pretty soon and luckily chose to do it inside the Tetrapodium and Arthropodium – a small room exhibiting skeletons and sketches, all in ivory and black, of four and six legged animals. We played, taking turns at identifying and finding the different animals: “ I see a tortoise” – “Here”. “I see a rhino” – ‘There”, running around the room, with little going pointing excitedly at every find. We must have been at it for 15-20 minutes minimum, covering almost all of the animals in the room. 

We ended our tour with a visit to the museum cafeteria and a tasty sandwich. I’m sure we’ll be back again soon, as it was lots of fun.

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We had set out to see the dinosaurs gallery, just like Katie in “Katie and the dinosaurs”, the biggest display in Europe entirely dedicated to dinosaurs, exploring their life and their evolution. Their display of original iguanodons skeletons, discovered in a mine in Belgium, is pretty impressive. It had never occurred to me before, but there were dinosaurs in my home country. I saw the mould of “Zalmoxes”, a small herbivore dinosaur that lived in Transylvania, which at the time was an island  

It was one of those settings that made little gosling feel over-excited, he was constantly on the move, running from one dinosaur skeleton to another – “look mummy! what is this?”, mostly looking around for the T-rex and squealing at every find, particularly the flying dinosaurs hanging down from the ceiling; climbing on platforms (when we weren’t quick enough to explain we were not allowed to touch any skeleton; no, that one either :P) or crawling under them. Luckily, the gallery is displayed in a vast, high-ceiling hall, with plenty of space to move around without risk of damage. 

He courted for a while a virtual rendering of a Pachycephalosaurus frontly and angrily moving towards the viewer and smashing glass; he was very scared, but this “T-rex” attracted him terribly. After playing an approaching and going away game for 10-15 minutes,  he decided he didn’t want to be there any longer or return again. Almost 45 engaging minutes spent in the museum, that’s a pretty awesome start! 

From there, we moved on for a quick visit to a new exhibition called “The living planet”, that featured stuffed animals from all over the world. We spent some time identifying them. Little gosling really liked the giraffe, the zebra and the bear. I liked the fox and the butterflies. We only managed to see a small part of the exhibition before he displayed clear signs of tiredness and we called it a day. But we’ll go back. There was a nice part of the exhibit in which animals were exhibited against images of their habitat, which I think little gosling would have lots of fun exploring. 

We kept talking about the dinosaur gallery, explaining the dinosaur had been scary for us too, but it was a movie; the dinosaur was not alive or real. He was safe. We were safe together. By the next morning, he was convinced. He declared he wanted to go back to the dinosaurs some day. 

We explained there were many other museums we could visit and he immediately asked to go to a museum with planes or cars. Now he’s mentioning going to the museum almost every day and has made up his mind: the next museum needs to be the Autoworld, the cars museum. The aviation hall in the Military History Museum, the Museum of Musical Instruments and the Tram Museum will follow.  We’ll definitely go back to the Natural Sciences Museum, there are so many things to see and learn. I’d love to see the Gallery of Humankind or the minerals, for example.  

There are few museums I visited growing up. It was usually during summer camps or road trips with my parents that we’d visit memorial houses for famous writers, painters, historical personalities or historical monuments. In my youth, I preferred fortresses, castles and palaces or history museums to any other, although I checked the famous art museums in European capitals. I discovered science museums later and they made me regret not having grown in places where these were accessible; who knows, maybe I would have been more interested in sciences. 

Museums broaden our knowledge of the world and instill appreciation for it; foster curiosity and open up a world of imagination, exploration and experimentation; encourage, support and foster love for learning. What an amazing exposure to science, art and history!! What a fun, solid foundation for intellectual growth and development…

The early years are incredibly important in developing the brains of children and lifelong learning begins at a young age. Children are interested in learning about content and are capable of understanding many concepts very early on. Museums expose children to learning possibilities in a rich and dynamic educational environment, like no other learning space. They can introduce unknown worlds and concepts through interactive exhibits and hands-on play, allowing children to take ownership of their own learning process. 

Museums also offer unique environments for quality family time and an amazing alternative for engaging togetherness (particularly appealing for those days when the weather is less appealing for nature outings). Because visits to museums are special occasions, they become highly memorable for both children and adults – a shared intergenerational learning and joyful discovery experience – sparking enduring family conversations and family stories and memories. 

All in all, museums encourage children to dream, wonder and fantasise. Museums inspire. All the reasons and benefits why we find it important to introduce little gosling to museums from a young age. Who knows, maybe it will help him discover his talents and passions and  stimulate him to become a lifelong learner and, why not, a museum goer.  

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Little gosling stopped at every tree on our way, circling them, looking for spiderwebs and enthusiastically pointing them out to us, “mummy, there’s a spider web”! We observed red and black beetles bustling up and down the tree, various mosses growing on the trunks, fungi growing amongst the roots of the trees. We managed to distract his attention away from the trees with a big flock of geese that had left behind lots of feathers and wildly colored blue and green dragonflies playing chase above the well kept water basins in the park. 

He happily sped on his balance bike, faster and faster, asking us to run alongside him and laughing whole-heartedly all along. He was so busy, that he didn’t even want to stop to eat the delicious hamburger fresh from the grill which he had found so irresistible other times. Everything caught his attention. The planes flying above, taking off from the nearby airport made him look up and start singing “Avion cu motor,/ ia-ma si pe mine-n zbor,/ nu te iau, ca esti mic,/ si te cheama….”. He still remembers the ground sprinkled with molehills..  

One of the episodes little gosling recollects the most is the first time we gathered chestnuts. We took home maaaany chestnuts on that occasion. We were approaching the exit to the park, we were almost at the tram station and I was almost sorry we had not found any chestnuts on our way, when we spotted some in a tree above us. I was showing little gosling, when my husband quickly grabbed a branch and started swinging. A rain of chestnuts fell upon us! The little one started running around excitedly, gathering each and every fallen chestnut :))), amazed at how daddy had made them fall. We took all of them home and played at ordering them by size and at building shapes with them: triangle, square, circle, rectangle, diamond. Since then, the chestnuts in the park that we cross on our way to school have started falling. Every morning we look for the newly fallen ones and little gosling kicks them around running; towards the exit to the park he throws or kicks a chestnut rolling down into the lake. Every once in a while, he comes home with some chestnuts in his pocket :). 

My intention with the leaves was to press them and then play with them together, maybe draw them, playing associations and identify the tree they belonged to, start working on a herbarium..  I managed to press some of them, but most are drying along on colorful trays around the living room. I did draw them, however, and that, I discovered, was a thoroughly enjoyable and relaxing activity for myself. Quite a learning experience, also, as I was never very knowledgeable about trees, however much I enjoyed spending time outdoors. 

Nevertheless, we keep gathering leaves, from all the parks we visit… As autumn progresses, we find more colours, orange, the occasional red… The other day, he got excited with a beautiful yellow American walnut tree, playing with its leaves and fruits. He loves kicking or touching the leaves, throwing them into the water… And I enjoy watching him explore and play in and with nature.

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He has recently started to ask about birthdays and we’ve been talking about months, soo… I also made a #seasonsandmonthsoftheyearwheel, inspired by @playlearngrowwiths and @learning.the.lovely. Cutting carton, reinforcing it, gluing, drawing was so absorbing and relaxing! Great activity for both mommy and kid ! I’m no artist, but little gosling gets the images, which is what matter. I was a bit taken aback when little gosling pointed to my November and took my pumpkin for a clementine , but hey! I just found out his big blue eyed animal friend I’ve been calling an owl for the past 6 months is actually a penguin!!! We learn together! Both wheels are now proudly embellishing our fruit bowls in the kitchen. And a weather wheel is in the making

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