London with little ones #8 Imperial War Museum

 It has been a long time since I did a 'London with little ones' blog post but I felt today's visit was definitely worthy of a post.
We took the Overground train to London Liverpool Street Station, then the underground train to Lambeth North. The Imperial War museum is a 5 min walk from the tube station and is well sign posted. As it is half term we were expecting the museum to be busy and although it took us some time to get a free table for lunch it was not as busy as the Natural History Museum or Science Museum normally are.

Before we got started we grabbed some lunch in the museum cafe, refilled our water bottles and made a toilet stop.

It is fair to say that MJ and his Grandad were most at ease looking round the tanks, planes, guns etc but there was something for all tastes to have a look at. Even Lj who is 4 yrs old engaged in a few of the pieces. On the third floor a kids activity was set up. Each child was given a piece of paper, pencil and clip board and encouraged to look at the British first world war art and pick out some simple shapes to draw on their paper. One of the paintings really captured their imaginations which annoyingly I can't remember the name of the artist or the painting title. It depicted an explosion in a city, showing a colourful spiral rising through triangular shards of buildings and glass. Lj picked out the spiral and drew it onto her paper. Then she drew a snail, flowers, clouds and a little girl. Once we were finished drawing we headed to the art studio to transfer our shapes to polystyrene sheets, paint the image and print it onto paper. The lady leading the activity commented on Lj's picture saying that it would be nice to see more flowers in the museum!!! MJ's picture was of swords and guns and created a nice print which is was proud of.

Outside the museum, within the grounds there is a play park where the children ran off some energy and filled their lungs with fresh air. After 3 hrs in the museum, 30 mins or so playing outside we headed back to Liverpool street to meet M for dinner before returning home.

On the way back to the station MJ told me that this was his favourite day out in London...high praise from our little man who normally has a more reserved judgement.