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With half term just around the corner, parents all around the country will be looking out for things to do with their children to keep them amused. With some insights and fabulous reviews from others, I’ve pulled together a quick list of some great FREE museums around the country; check them out and do let me know what you thought of them.

Natural History

Everyone loves The Natural History Museum in London but it can get super busy in the holidays. Did you know that there are other, smaller options?

• The Natural History Museum at Tring; my girls loved drawing the animals as they went around.
• The Natural History Museum Oxford, and the Pitt Rivers museum next door. Without the queues of London, and smaller, you still get to see dinosaur skeletons, and pop to the adjoining Pitt Rivers to see shrunken heads and other gory things children like!
• The Booth Museum of Natural History in Brighton.

Transport museums

The Royal Airforce Museum in Hendon, north London has so much to see and do – lots to learn, but a lot of interactive features too. You can sit in a cockpit of a Spitfire and dress up in RAF uniform; there’s almost too much to see and do in a single day. Great choice of cafes too!

The National Railway Museum in York – although the museum itself is free, it has it’s own road train (it’s £3 adult each way and £2 child) and a ride on this is a must! You can catch the train outside the museum and it takes you on a a short journey to Duncombe Place – York Minster.

Check out my post on free activities to amuse the kids in half term HERE

National History

With buildings dating back as far as the 12th century, St Fagan’s, the Welsh National Museum of History provides a chance to see what life was like in Wales through the ages. They’ve taken various buildings from across Wales and rebuilt them at the site near Cardiff. It’s a huge site and you’ll easily spend a day there. And there’s lots of open ground for kids to have fun.

My Scottish friend Eileen says The National Museum of Scotland is an amazing museum. They’ve got a robot exhibition on until May which looks pretty cool too.

Science

The Science Museum in London is so worth a visit and is one of our very favourite free museums. However, if you’re looking for a science museum in the north of the country, try these two:

The Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester has a variety of things to see and do from sensory lights and puzzles in the Experiment! gallery, to seeing huge engines and old vintage trains in the power house, and aeroplanes in the air and space hall.

The National Media Museum in Bradford, West Yorkshire is yet another brilliant FREE museum managed by the Science Museum Group. This one is dedicated to all things media and it’s a great place to go if you’re interested in TV, AV production, animation, and computing.