Cranbrook Institute of Science – Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, USA
A Night at the Museum
No, not in the Ben Stiller, creepy displays coming to life sort of way. But in a laid back, not too crowded, most enjoyable visit to a museum sort of way, the Cranbrook Institute of Science did not disappoint.
Spending a good deal of time in the Metro Detroit area watching Buddy play hockey, we are forever looking for fun, cultural, or learning experiences to engage in along the way. This particular spring weekend Buggie and Bubba were staying home with Grandma and Grandpa due to Buggie’s soccer schedule. This gave us the unique opportunity to do something that Buggie and certainly Bubba might not get as much out of at this time.
Museum tickets were provided by Cranbrook Institute of Science for us to explore. As always I do my best to represent the opinions of each person in our crew that attended.
Our hockey travels brought us to the Troy and Hazel Park suburbs. Cranbrook Institute of Science was an easy 25 minute drive from the ice rink in Hazel Park, and it is only about a 15 minute drive if you are looking for a Detroit Zoo rainy day alternative.
TWILIGHT HOURS – The late Saturday night hours allowed us to arrive at 5:30 and still have enough time to explore. The museum always offers a reduced evening rate, so if you have just a few hours, I wouldn’t hesitate to check it out.
SCAVENGER HUNT If there is one thing that Buddy enjoys, it is scavenger hunts. Upon arrival, he was presented with two different options. One that was specific to the temporary traveling exhibit DINOSAURS, and another that covered the entire museum. {Return your completed scavenger hunt paper to the front desk when complete for a prize from the prize chest.}
The traveling exhibit is in addition to your regular museum entrance, but it was very well done, and worth the small fee.
Even if you are not going to do the traveling exhibit, venture downstairs anyway. Buddy was bummed that the Science Shop closed at 4pm, because he was curious about the bucket of excavation materials to sift through.
He did become drawn into an interactive exhibit about water pollution in the Great Lakes, and was pretty excited to have learned many of these facts in school this year.
DINOSAURS – Kids, young and old alike will enjoy the room full of dinosaur skeletons. Some of them are cast recreations, but there are a few that are rare full intact skeletons. I also enjoyed the undisturbed example of a pile of dinosaur bones before they have been chiseled out and cleaned.
Next we wandered up the stairs to an area focused on the rotation of the earth and the effects of glaciers over time.
THE STORY OF US – As we continued around the winding path of the museum, we came to The Story of Us. When you turned the corner, a sensor triggered the holographic presentation, which was an excellent way to draw in the attention of a child. There were digital story books along your journey through this section of the museum. They were each short presentations that evoked thought about the artifacts held behind the glass. Midway through there was another holographic presentation that included a young boy asking questions. Buddy, at 9 was the ideal target for the level of the presentation, but clearly anyone could enjoy the way it was presented.
The only thing that was unfortunate, is that a group of people passed through the midway presentation room a couple minutes before we were ready to move on, and in doing so, they triggered the presentation to begin. We then had to wait in order to see the presentation again from the beginning. It was worth the wait, but holding Buddy back from an otherwise empty room was a challenge.
ROCKS – Around the bend, we found a beautiful display of rocks, minerals, and crystals. Several hands on exhibits helped to demonstrate the formation of each rock or crystal. This game was a fun representation of the reasoning behind the random edges within certain crystals that are formed by cooling magma.
Continuing on, more rocks and gems for your eyes to wonder about. Hint it was in here that we finally found one of the rocks on the scavenger hunt. We were looking in the wrong classification, since his mom may have thought it was different mineral.
MOTION – Tucked away along the path to the observatory you will find a hallway dedicated to motion. Both Buddy and Dad were drawn to this bounces and angels exhibit. The goal is to get the ping pong ball to bounce off the adjustable paddles and into the hoop. There is more than one right answer as we discovered while we played here for about a half an hour.
PLANETARIUM – Next up was our ticketed planetarium show, Michigan Sky Tonight. Unlike the Sesame Street show that we have seen previously, this program was not prerecorded, and was a live presentation that invited audience participation. This was not the largest planetarium we have ever been to, but the humor, albeit dry, that was injected throughout the show made it one of the more enjoyable shows we have experienced.
As soon as the planetarium presentation was over, we headed to the observatory, since it opens to the public at 8:30 for night sky viewing. Buddy was able to climb up and look outside the observatory, but the sky was too light to see anything of note yet. We took the opportunity to go get our vehicle (see below for a lesson learned about following Google map app.)
We returned to the observatory at 9:20pm. Buddy spent the remainder of the evening climbing up and down the ladder to see if the view through the telescope had changed. Mars was the object that the telescope was focused on. It is quite far from Earth, since it is currently on the other side of the sun, so it appeared as a tiny twinkeling speck through the lens.
Mr. Jan Fiolka was a delight. He is clearly an academic of the astronomy world, yet he was so patient and relatable to the many children of all ages that came up to view the night sky through a very expensive telescope.
As we exited the museum at just past 10:00pm, Buddy was already excitedly talking about his next visit, where he would like to bring his cousin back with him. Dad was also still talking about this visit days later.
If you plan to spend more than an hour at the museum, we recommend this location for school age children and adults.
{A little word of caution, for some reason my google map app on my phone directed us to the parking lot for the Cranbrook Art Academy, which was a delightful 10 minute walk from the Science Institute. We later used a visual look at the map to guide us from that parking lot Tamarack Way off of Woodward Ave, just be sure you are headed to the correct building, unless you are indeed looking for a nice walk.}
