The Natural History Museum, London, with a toddler

When it comes to New Year’s resolutions, there’s nothing like striking while the iron’s hot. So I braved the tube (far more successfully than last time) and we headed to the Natural History Museum, easily one of my favourite places for kids in London.

There’s already a huge difference in experience since our visit to the mammoth exhibition last summer, when Minnie was still small enough to want to be carried most of the time.

This time, I checked the buggy in to the cloakroom and ignoring my own tips on visiting with a toddler, we headed into the museum without a plan to see what we could see.

For my complete set of tips on visiting London’s museums with toddlers and kids, check out my ultimate guide

Top of the list were the dinosaurs. Minnie is a bit ambivalent about them at the moment, veering from very excited (on the journey) to mildly terrified, when presented with the first skeleton, a new Stegosaurus.

Applying perfect toddler logic, we established some were friendly dinosaurs (particularly the green ones – your guess is as good as mine, although I think most of her information is coming from a Meg and Mog story/Julia Donaldson) – and some were scary.

The huge dipolodocus in the main hall passed the toddler test, but I decided to abandon the main section with the roaring T-Rex for a future visit and head to something less alarming.

It doesn’t really matter which direction you wander in. Minnie was as happy climbing the stairs to look down at the view, and spot interesting carvings on the fabulous building, as eyeing up the series of exhibits.

First we stumbled across the ‘Treasures’ collection, some of the most exceptional items picked from the 70 million the museum has tucked away.

Each has a particular story to tell but I loved the fact there were objects for Minnie to touch, replicas or models to help understand what was hidden in the cases.

For a toddler who wants to ‘fuzz’ the fur of a gorilla in a glass case and pat the nose of a dinosaur skeleton, being able to stroke some exhibits definitely got points.

After a detour past crocodiles and Komodo dragon – also scary but delightfully so this time (more toddler logic) – we wandered through the small marine section, with sea creatures and coral among the displays, plus some shells which were apparently one of the most memorable moments for Minnie.

But the big winner was the mammals gallery. The highlight is the astonishing Blue Whale, mind-bogglingly large hanging the length of the room with a viewing gallery to appreciate it properly.

Dwarfed underneath were elephants, giraffe, rhinos and a succession of tusked and sabre-toothed skeletons keeping them company.

There are plenty of odds and ends to keep short attention spans gripped, including the chance to press buttons which make dolphin noises.

By that time, once you add in several toilet breaks (thankfully you’re never far from one in the museum, with helpful lifts to avoid running up several flights of stairs), a moving oversize scorpion which freaked me out far more than Minnie and a saunter past cabinet after cabinet of birds.

I’m always fascinated by the dodos, Minnie homed in on a toucan – but by this point, we’d been there for almost two hours and meltdown was imminent.

I know I’m lucky to live about half an hour away, so we can spend a few hours at a time – and I also know we could go back again, head into a different direction and spend the same amount of time seeing totally different things, even excluding the Red Zone where the noises emerging put Minnie off the thought of violent geology.

Everything is so beautifully labelled, with information that means I’m learning plenty too and lots of thought for what children would want that I still feel it’s one of the best museum experiences around.

Maybe next time we’ll work up to those scary dinosaurs. Which are your favourite parts of the museum to visit?

For my complete set of tips on visiting London’s museums with toddlers and kids, check out my ultimate guide

Images copyright MummyTravels

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