Open House at the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research

We had a real blast this Children's Season.

We managed to squeeze in one more visit before the school holidays ended, this time to the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research (RMBR). This was one museum I didn't know existed till I checked the schedule for Children's Season. It instantly caught my attention because Noey really loves natural history museums. Or at least, he loved The Australian Museum in Sydney, a really awesome natural history museum that I realise I totally forgot to blog about when writing up about our trip last Nov. Ran out of steam as I usually do when writing about holidays! Oops.

Silly me got confused reading up about the RMBR Open House and thought that we had to register to go for it. So we would have missed this but for Delphine kindly informing me otherwise. It was late in the afternoon by the time we managed to organise ourselves, but since we didn't have any other plans for the day, we decided (ok, I kinda insisted) that we make a trip anyway.

The RMBR is literally situated in one of the blocks in the Faculty of Science, and an uphill walk from the nearest carpark, so it really wasn't the easiest place to get to! We were glad we made it though. I wouldn't really call it a museum -- the place was so tiny -- but Noey really enjoyed peering into the cases and asking 1001 questions about the various exhibits.

Checking out the starfish, one of Noey's favourite sea creatures. "It's like a pillow!" he said. Close, it's a cushion sea star.

What's that?" says Noey for the 1000th time. I have have no idea about this one. Think he was asking his Papa because I don't remember looking at this exhibit!

(Edited 8 July: Noey tells me it's the skull of a Dugong. The boy really has a good memory!)

Totally missing out! This girl always manages to fall asleep when we bring her out.

Noey peers at some creepy crawlies.

"I totally wouldn't want that to come alive if I were you!"

Exhibit N. 

2.5 years old.

We were too late to take part in the activities, but it was ok. I know my son would rather be looking at the exhibits than colouring buttons and getting his face painted.

Some of the samples of colourful buttons the kids could make for themselves.

One in the lovely set of puzzles that they gave us to take home. There was a stack of 6 and the pictures were really nice. I almost feel like framing them up for Noey's room!

Just before we headed off, a guide helpfully came over and explained some of the exhibits to us. Noey was super tickled when he pointed out the reticulated python's privates. "The snake's pee pee!" he laughed. I think we'll be hearing "Noey saw a snake's pee pee" for a while.

You can just about see it -- it's the white bits of the huge python on the left. That one snake apparently has 2?

This is a long way from being a full fledged natural history museum yet. Aside from the size, the displays also reminded me more of a science lab than a museum. I found the display of birds lying flat on their backs and looking rather dead quite disturbing. Noey kept insisting they were sleeping and I couldn't bring myself to tell him otherwise. That aside, it was an enjoyable albeit rather short trip.

Me: Our son really loves animals huh?
DD: Well, we did name him Noah...

We were told that the behind-the-scenes tour is really worth going for as you will be brought to see 3 floors more of exhibits that are not usually shown to the public. I will be keeping an eye out for that the next time they have an open house, which I was told will be towards the end of the year. There is free entry otherwise to the RMBR on weekdays only.