Heather C Heather C is a married, mom of three: big sis Lily and identical twins Natalie and Sophia. She has been guest blogging for Mumbling Mommy since February of 2012 and began working as a Social Media Editor in 2014. After nearly a decade in banking, she now works part time at a doctor's office specializing in breastfeeding medicine and spends the rest of her days in her Midwest home as zookeeper/stay-at-home-mom. Heather C is also a runner, hiker, yogi, bike rider and more. She reads when she finds more than a few minutes to herself and she hosts a lot of pajama dance parties in her kitchen. In her spare time, she's the co-leader for her daughter's Girl Scout troop and an active member of the school's Parent-Teacher Committee as well as a certified postpartum doula.

Recently, our family of five traveled south from our home in Missouri for a spring break trip to Georgia. I have family in the area and it was a manageable 8-hour drive. We planned a few activities during our visit, and one was the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, Georgia (about an hour northwest of Atlanta.)

Our family loves science museums. In fact, we are members to our local science museum, the St. Louis Science Center. This membership granted us free admission to Tellus through reciprocal benefits. If you aren’t a member or don’t have these benefits, admission will cost you $10-$14 a person depending on age. Overall, I definitely recommend going to the museum. Our kids are ages 4 and 6. I would not recommend the museum for children any younger than this, though. Our 4-year-olds liked it, but not quite as much as our 6-year-old.

What to Expect at the Tellus Science Museum

The museum is divided up by galleries. Our favorite was the rocks and minerals gallery. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such beautiful rocks. The museum featured very cool displays. Disclaimer: almost everything was behind glass cases and wasn’t designed to be touched. This was a bummer to my kids of course, so keep that factor in mind.

Another popular gallery was the fossils section. This section offered a bit more as far as things you could do or touch with interactive trivia-type displays. My girls were really fascinated by the fossil displays of dozens of prehistoric dinosaurs and animals.

In addition to the galleries, there is a great kid section with a ton of hands-on activities so those little ones can finally touch away! We’ve been to plenty of museums where almost everything was missing pieces, broken, or too crowded to really enjoy, but that wasn’t the case at Tellus. We had to pry our kids away from these displays to get home in time for dinner.

Other points of mention: There is no indoor picnic area for outside food. We frequently pack snacks for our kids to save money, but Tellus has a strict no-outside-food policy. There is a small cafe to eat in if you want to purchase items or an outdoor covered pavilion across the parking lot otherwise. We visited on a very windy Saturday afternoon where the temps were barely in the mid fifties, so we grudgingly skipped snack time.

We also opted to buy tickets to the planetarium show. I’d probably skip this in the future. Our “guide” gave incorrect information, put my husband to sleep, and the kids were very antsy the whole time. There were a few cool things we learned during the show, but it definitely lacked excitement to keep us engaged till the end. Forty five minutes later, the kids were more than ready to get out of there.

Check out the Tellus Science Museum website for full details and to plan your visit. The Tellus Science Museum is rated 4.5/5 on TripAdvisor and only 5 people out of 326 reviews rated the museum as less than average.

Have you ever been to Tellus Science Museum? If not, what is your favorite science center?

Category: Family Free Time

Tags: Family Trip Tuesday