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.
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| 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.
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| A typical Buryat family? (The extra child is the son of my friends, Oksana & Vladik.) |
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| 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.
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| Although she enjoyed seeing real nerpa seals, my daughter was happy to see this one up-close. |
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| 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 . . .
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| 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!
