Experience Music Project & Science Fiction Museum

Thanks to my friend, Shannon, my kids and I got to visit a couple of great museums in Seattle for free and tell you about them. Shannon has an amazing review and giveaway blog called "The Mommy Files" that you can visit here. I was so excited to visit the EMP/SFM because although I've lived in Seattle for four years now, I didn't think there was much for my kids to enjoy at these museums (both museums are housed in the same building). But I was proved wrong! First we went to the Experience Music Project side of the museum and no, my boys didn't care to look at all of the paraphernalia of Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana, or Pearl Jam, but they LOVED the Music Lab. That's where they could get their hands on the instruments and play with them. Listening stations,keyboards,the mixing board and of course, the drums.Then we were on to the Science Fiction Museum where they don't let you take any pictures of the cool things they have there. Joseph was excited to name the Star Wars characters we saw, including a life size R2D2. And I found my own excitement in explaining to Joseph who the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and E.T. are. They have life-size models of them too. But the best part of the museum, I thought, was the Jim Henson exhibition currently on display. Justin thought it was hilarious to pretend to be Bert at the puppet theater. It was great that they had that place for kids to play and touch the puppets because you can't touch any of the others on display. Check out the video to see how you can be in the Muppet's Band. I have a whole new appreciation for puppeteers. Those puppets are heavy! The exhibition was done very well. I studied art history in college and took a class I loved about museum curatorship so I'm a nerd about noticing the presentation like that. What I thought was really great was that they covered several whole walls from floor to ceiling in fuzzy muppet material in really bright colors. Here's my boys in front of the green fuzzy wall at the end of our fun morning. You can tell Justin is really worn out when he has to hold his thumb in this mouth like that!