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Rachel Roland is a mom on a mission - exploring the Valley with her two little companions in search of the best restaurants, attractions, and products for you and your children. See what she has in store for your family today!

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After hearing about the 'dinosaur' museum (The Arizona Musuem of Natural History) from many friends, I was so happy to finally get a chance to take Jeremiah and Sarah to visit the dinos myself. When we visited, the staff member at the front desk directed us to the right - into the dinosaur area. Clearly, this is the most popular area as it was filled with school children. (They have school groups most weekdays, but it seemed like they were gone around noon. The museum does seem quiet without them, though!)

In the dinosaur area, there are several fossilized dinosaur skeletons to look at and learn about. There are also dinosaur floor puzzles to work on, and a fossilized bone that you can actually touch! There's also a dino footprint you can compare your foot to. In this area, there is also a large wall with a waterfall on it - there are animatronic dinosaurs as well as frequent 'flash floods' with lightning, thunder, and a lot of water. These are fun for the older kids, although Sarah was a little afraid of the flashing lights and loud thunder.

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Another great place to visit on the lower level is the Exploration Station, which has so many activities we didn't even get to them all! They have counting activities, puzzles, stencils, x-rays, magnets, puppets, magnifying glasses...and that was only a few steps into the room. The kids easily would have stayed there for an hour or two, but I was eager to move on to the rest of the museum.

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We visited the space portion of the museum next, and it was so neat! I think it would be more enjoyable for older children - there's a lot of reading, etc, which my kids are too little for right now, but they loved looking at the space photos from the Hubble Telescope - those were amazing and incredible.

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There's an actual jail at the Museum - it was the original Mesa jail and let me tell you - it was quite intimidating. I wanted to get a photo of the kids in one of the jail cells but they were so scared by it, they wouldn't even go in. We decided to do some panning for gold instead. We went panning right after a big school group and I think they might have found all the gold - we were able to find tiny, tiny specks, and a young man from the school group actually showed us how to pan. (I thought they might have an employee out there to demonstrate, but they didn't.) Jeremiah and Sarah loved looking for the shiny specks in their pans, and we went home with small bags of gold.

There's so much more to the Arizona Museum of Natural History that we weren't able to visit because the kids were getting hungry. Because the museum is located in downtown Mesa, there are a wealth of restaurants nearby to have a quick and delicious lunch with the family.

The Arizona Museum of Natural History is located at: 53 N. Macdonald Mesa 85201.

It's open: Tues - Fri: 10 a.m. - 5 p.m, Sat: 11 a.m. - 5 p.m, and Sun: 1 - 5 p.m. (The Museum is closed Mondays and Holidays)

Admission is: $10 for Adults, $6 - Children 3-12, $9 - Seniors 65+, $8 - Students 13+ with ID, and Free - Children ages 2 & younger

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I'm Rachel - a mom, wife, and 'green' blogger at Small Steps On Our Journey. If you have any suggestions for future articles or any questions on this one, please contact me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or tweet me @rachelroland!