Guatemala Children's Museum

Last Friday while in Guatemala City we made a visit to the Guatemala Children's Museum.  It was our second time to go there and we just simply love it!  Our first visit was back in 2012 right after Ben was born.  There is still a lot there that my boys are too small for so it will be a place we will be visiting for many years to come.  I'm thinking we might just make it a new Christmas tradition to visit there in December on our annual trip into the Capital.  The schools are out on break so it was not crowded at all.  It was a good time of the year to go.  My boys had a blast (and us adults did too, ha).  Here are some photos of our time there-

My boys at the museum entrance. You can see Jingles joined in on the fun.

This sign was made out of Legos.

Ben loved playing here and making the musical sounds.

The museum is divided into small stations.  Everything is educational.  There is a helper at each station to show the kids what to do and how to do it.  That sure makes it easy on the parents.  At this particular station the kids learned about earthquakes and got to build a "house".  Afterwards they pressed a button and the belt below it shook back and forth like an earthquake.   The point was to see if their "house" was built strong enough to withstand an earthquake.  Their house did not fall as you can see from the video below.

Learning how hot air balloons work and getting to see it go up into the air.

my little astronaut

We all loved this bubble station!

They had a whole section devoted to coffee showing how it's grown, picked, cleaned, roasted, etc. 

Here's Cruz "picking coffee beans".  They are picked when they turn red and look like cherries.

Learning about recycling.  He had to sort several items into the booths labeled paper, metal, glass, and plastic.

He loves working puzzles.  Here he chose to make a boat with the shapes.

We love this part of the museum!  It's like a gymnasium filled with balls.  At several spots around the room are places to drop the balls and they are carried either through suction tunnels or conveyor belts to the top and dropped into a large container.  When the containers get full the sirens sounds and the lights flash and the balls come raining down.  It's a lot of fun for the kids (and adults too).

Ben loading balls.  He's a little cleaner so this was very fun for him.

Here's an overhead view of where the balls go.  That clear container holds them until it gets full. 

Here you can see the balls falling down on Cruz.  How fun is that!

Their favorite part was this farm area.  It's just for kids under 5.  It's filled with books, puzzles, and costumes.  Here's Cruz "fishing". 

They loved pushing these carts around and "picking vegetables".

Here they are picking oranges from the tree.

We spent a while outside on the playground area.  They have several of these car suits for the kids to put on and pretend.  The sidewalks are painted like roads and there are traffic lights all around.  It's a lot of fun, especially for little boys.

There's a gas station to refill when necessary.

They had several traffic controller costumes out there as well.  Cruz liked pretending to blow his whistle and direct the cars.

I think he mostly just liked bossing his little brother, ha.

After that we headed back inside to the theater to see a live Christmas play put on by some of the workers.  It was really cute and the boys sat still and watched it all.  It was a fun way to end our visit there.  There is a Pollo Campero restaurant attached to the museum so we stopped for lunch before heading back to the mission house for afternoon naps.  It had been a super fun morning and I cannot wait for us to go back and do it again!