Guest Blog: New Jersey Ben Franklin Institute by The Dog Walker

On Saturday, Drama Queen the family and I went down to Philadelphia to visit one of the most interesting museums. Philadelphia is pretty much their downtown place to visit museums, monuments, and even the Eagles sports games. Before I came on the trip, we were going to go to Sesame Place, where it's Twizzler's favorite park, but it was raining that day, so we went to the Ben Franklin Institute Museum instead. It was an interesting museum in Philadelphia, especially where we can learn a bit about Benjamin Franklin in history.

This entrance is where we stood by the statue of Benjamin Franklin. It's almost like seeing the statue of Abraham Lincoln, only not. The museum had quite a lot of fun and different exhibits to see. There were Earth, Electricity, The Heartbeat, Space, The Brain, The Train, The Airplane, and the Machine. A lot of the exhibits had some fun interactive ways to learn about the things in life and in history. One of the biggest and most interesting attractions was going through the inside of a heartbeat. It was like going through a children's playground, only by hearing loud beats. Drama Queen thought it was really narrow inside and I believed her, because in some parts, I had to walk sideways to get past. 

In the Earth exhibit, we were learning about how the environment should be replenished and why it's important to keep it that way, even if it struggles economically. One interactive way in the Earth exhibit was trying to stack a metal X's and magnetic poles to see if they could survive a small earthquake. In the Electricity exhibit, we found the attraction on Benjamin Franklin's scientific experiment with a kite and key. We touched the key and it gave each of us a little zap. It was really shocking. In the Train exhibit, Twizzler and Twizlet were very excited to see what it's like inside the old fashioned locomotive. It was really huge from where we were standing at the bottom. And after that, Twizzler wanted to play in the little kids area with the little toy train sets.

 

In the Brain exhibit, it had a lot of mind-blowing exhibits! They had a little dark play area for kids to climb up to see what it's like inside the brain. Twizlet kept playing on it for almost half an hour, it's like she wanted to stay inside her brain for a long time. In the Airplane exhibit, they had a lot of interactive booths, like zooming a paper airplane and even pumping up air to see how fast they can get a plane to take off. In the Machine exhibit, they had some interesting games and puzzles of how to use the five main tools of machinery. One of them was learning how to use gears, pulleys, and levers. I was even surprised to see how the Apple technology has been updated since the beginning of the first Apple Macintosh computer.

In the Space exhibit, they had interesting ways of how to understand the Solar System and how scientists used telescopes to look in space. Twizzler really liked interacting with the touch screen computer games at the museum, especially when learning how to build a train, an airplane, and a rocket. After a lot of the excitement in those exhibits, we grabbed a bite to eat at the Eatery in the museum. I thought it was really fun to see the Ben Franklin Institute museum to relearn all the things that we have been taught in school and to see them at the museum. 

One first and last thing that we did before and after the museum was that Teach was trying to show me the Philadelphia temple that was closest to their home. We drove through the busy town and stopped at a red light right next to the temple and it gave me the best photo opportunity as you can see. It was really a beautiful as well as many other temples throughout the world. I can just imagine there being a temple in New Jersey closest to Teach's home. It would be a blessing for them someday. And speaking of blessings, I want to explain about a special event that happened in New Jersey with the family while I was there with them. That will happen in the next post.