Russia "Snapshot" #6: Museum Fun

My kids enjoy short museum trips. Their attention spans are limited, of course, so we are selective about which museums we go to and how long we stay. : )

The Ulan-Ude History Museum, which has been built since I lived there, turned out to be a real gem.  It is a tiny museum, but has a discovery room of sorts for children. In it, there is an interactive pioneer trading post set up to show children what they were like in the 19th century.

Playing "store" with things that would have been sold in the 1800s.

Then, we found the 19th century Russian and Buryat dress-up costumes! That made it all the more fun.

I've already showed you some pictures from the Ethnographical Museum, an outdoor museum in Ulan-Ude, in the Let it Snow post, but here are a couple more. Below are some of the fun cut-outs that we took pictures with. 

A typical Buryat family?
(The extra child is the son of my friends, Oksana & Vladik.)

Camels in Siberia? Yes, camels are one of five traditional
domesticated animals that the Buryats herded.
The Ethnographical Museum has a small zoo with these guys and more.

The Natural Science Museum in Ulan-Ude is definitely not one of the world's great museums. It hasn't changed much since the early 90s either, but we managed to have a little fun anyway.

Although she enjoyed seeing real nerpa seals,
my daughter was happy to see this one up-close.

My son, the clown!

In Moscow, we went to the Pushkin Museum to see their Impressionist/Expressionist collection. The highlight for me was when we walked into a room filled with Matisses and both kids started yelling,  at the top of their lungs, "I know who this is! It's Matisse!" And I thought, okay, I have done something right in their art education . . .

The Pushkin Museum in Moscow. (Source)

This is my last "snapshot" of our trip! Hope you have enjoyed all of them and thank for reading!