Dino Snores!
Run every month for kids and grownups to is Dino Snores in the Natural History Museum in London you get the luxury of sleeping camping in the Natural History Museum for 1 night only with sleeping bags, torchlights and all supply of food taken away from you.
We actually had the privilege to do this, yes, yes I know what your thinking ‘who would want to leave the comfort of their own bed to sleep on the floor in the Natural History Museum where it’s cold and damp and full of stuffed animals?’. Actually, allot of people would do this since it has been run for nearly over 15 years with groups up to 300 coming to stay in the Museum every month.
The Night before going up to London we packed our bags and got a goodnights sleep ready to wake up bright n’ early in the morning to set off on our journey. When we got into central London we parked our car at Osterley and took the blue line up to Piccadilly Circus, Where we set of on our quest to Japan Centre (A Japanese shop and eatery).
Once we had finished our seafood ramen, sushi and mochi we had a quick peek inside M&M world and the LEGO shop before setting off to a café to hide as it was POURING down with rain. When the rain finally stopped we set of once again this time to the Natural History Museum when we got there we had a little time to spare so we went into the science museum where we had a wonder and participated in some activities. Once it was time to go into the museum we headed across the road to the National History museum.
When we first got into the museum about 6:30pm (queues expected) we were allocated groups with names such as red raptors blue triceratops etc. Then we were given camping mats and allocated our place to sleep for the night. We set up camp, settled in and took some pictures to instantly post on social media, so we can brag to our friends about our night in the museum when we’re really scared as hell about what lies ahead.
Our first activity was a torch lit trail of the dinosaur section in the dark; we were given torchlights, a piece of paper with 6 boxes and a crayon. The task was to find the dinosaur which had believe it or not, Lost its tooth (it turned out to be the Baryonyx) We were supposed the find the posts marked with the colour yellow and do etchings of part of the dinosaur and copy down the letters which, connected together made up the word Baryonx. The Baronyx is a type of dinosaur, which lived in the early Cretaceous period about 130-125 million years ago with a length of 10 meters, discovered by William Walker in a clay pit in Surrey in 1983.The Baryonyx was the first meat eating dinosaur to be discovered in England.
Now for the second activity, Dinner! Everybody had to bring their own dinner which to us, consist of oranges, onigiri, chocolate chip brioche, panettone, strawberry pencils, tic-tac’s and dolly mixtures…Not a very healthy selection, But, hey! This night is supposed to be fun, right? So why not bring all your favourite foods too?
Our third activity was a science show by the head of the Marine biology department the session started of with a huge Mexican wave which represented the arms of the octopus we then went on to learn about cephalopods how octopus have 8 ARMS not tentacles the difference between arms and tentacles is that the arms have the suction pads all the way along and tentacles have the suction pads only at the tip.
The forth activity was designing a dino T-shirt to take home. We first of all we practiced tracing the outline of our selected dino and then traced it onto our t-shirt and coloured it in.
The lights went out at midnight and 1st thing bright n early in the morning WE FELT THE BACK PAIN! Then we had a delicious breakfast, which consist of a yummy white chocolate and cranberry muffin, yogurt and a bottle of cloudy apple juice.
After breakfast we had a show from the ‘Animal Man’ where we got to hold a live tarantula pet a chinchilla and stroke a snake and watch an owl fly.
I would definitely recommend this experience, as it is an amazing learning opportunity for children from 7-11 free goody bag included!
