Educational Thanksgiving Point Activities and Events

We received a membership to Thanksgiving Point in exchange for this article. Our opinion remains our own.

Educational Thanksgiving Point Activities and Events

We have been spending quite a bit of time at Thanksgiving Point this summer.

Thanksgiving Point is a hub for family-friendly fun in Lehi, Utah. Centrally located between Provo and Salt Lake City, Thanksgiving Point is easy to access from all of Utah County and Salt Lake County.

As a family with lots of kids, we are always looking for activities that will keep the large age ranges we are dealing with entertained. Bonus points if the parents are also entertained.

As a homeschooling family, we especially love when these fun activities are also naturally educational.

Thanksgiving Point is one of these unique places that offers fun educational activities for kids of all ages without boring the parents to tears.

There are five main venues at Thanksgiving Point. Additionally, Thanksgiving Point also hosts family-friendly parties and activities throughout the year. Thanksgiving Point members get into each of the main (5) venues for free all year long, and Thanksgiving Point members also get a good discount on other venue special event tickets throughout the year.

Museum of Natural Curiosity

The Museum of Natural Curiosity is one of Thanksgiving Point’s most popular venues. It is like a children’s museum to end all children’s museums.

I have been to several children’s museums in my day. And my kids and I always have a great time at these kinds of places.

But the Museum of Natural Curiosity offers an experience above and beyond any other children’s museum I’ve ever been to.

Rainforest

To start with, we have the giant rainforest-themed playroom.

This whole area is a child-friendly zone where kids can climb, jump, swing, hang upside down, dance, shout, explore, solve puzzles, and so much more.

There is a trading post where you can bring in treasures you find while exploring the outside world and trade them for treasures other kids have brought in.

There is a sectioned off baby-safe zone where babies and toddlers can climb, slide, and explore, safe from the bigger kids running around. Mothers can sit and play with their babies while keeping an eye on their older kids.

See if you can hang upside down for as long as a sloth. Or if you can jump as high as a tree frog.

Water Works

What kid doesn’t love playing in the water?

The Water Works section has exhibits that teach kids about water.

There are also a few exhibits that teach about the strength and power of the winds, but my kids spend most of their time in the water sections.

There is a baby-friendly table where babies can sit in the middle of a water play zone and splash to their hearts’ content.

Bigger kids can run around and create pathways for flowing water and explore moving water from one spot to another.

There are even rain boots and raincoats for borrow to keep your kids’ clothing drier. (although I recommend planning on getting really really wet anyway)

Kidopolis

Kidopolis is a super exciting part of the Museum of Natural Curiosity.

It’s like a giant kid-friendly city!

Everything is kid-sized and totally explorable.

There is a movie theater, an auto parts store, a music studio, an oddities store, and even a tinker shop filled with GIANT legos.

Kids are free to explore each of these venues and play and pretend as if they are the owner of those venues. It’s a really fun experience!

We are in the middle of creating a Field Trip Curriculum based around this Kidopolis location.

Our curriculum will teach kids about a flourishing economy, how businesses cooperate, and how to work together for everybody’s success. It’s even going to include a very in-depth, interactive game.

It’s going to be epic!

I’ll update you when this Field Trip Curriculum is done. I don’t want to release it until it’s absolutely perfect!

Related Post: Homeschool Service Project Wild Goose Chase

Discovery Gardens

The Museum of Natural Curiosity also boasts an outdoor, kid-friendly garden area – Discovery Gardens!

There is a playground for kids to play on. And all the playground equipment works with gears and small motors so kids can see those kinds of things in action.

There is a miniature splash pad for summertime water fun (without the crowds!)

There is a giant sandbox area. Because what kid doesn’t like playing in the sand?

Caves to explore and mini off-trail campsites to play in, and a beautiful koi pond to enjoy.

And did I mention the child-sized hedge maze?

This is a fun place for kids to explore!

Traveling Exhibit

Every couple of months, the Museum of Natural Curiosity rotates the exhibit in here.

A few years ago, there was a really cool optical illusion exhibit. You learned about the eye and the brain and how sometimes (and why!) your eyes play tricks on your brain. It was very cool (if not a little advanced for some of the littler kids)

I especially like these traveling exhibits because they invite fun and learning for the older kids who are playing at the venue. Toddlers can play in all the other areas but the traveling exhibits tend to be geared towards kids who are a bit more advanced.

American Adventure Maze

This summer, the traveling exhibit is an American Adventure Maze.

It’s like a live-action video game where you are a character from early Colonial Jamestown and you go through the maze to see if you’d survive this early settlement.

It’s very fun! And very interactive. I highly recommend.

Plus, the educational factor is en-pointe for this exhibit. I learned a lot about settlers of early Jamestown and their environment. Very cool stuff.

Related Post: Thanksgiving Point American Adventure Maze

Check Out The Video Summary Of Thanksgiving Point

Museum of Ancient Life

The Museum of Ancient Life is Thanksgiving Point’s dinosaur museum.

I have been to a few dinosaur museums in my day. And I’m not going to lie – most of them are painfully boring. (what can I say – I’m not into dinosaurs)

But I can honestly say, The Museum of Ancient Life is probably the best dinosaur museum I have ever been to.

Highly interactive, very entertaining, and there were some unique exhibits I have never seen anywhere else.

For example – I had never heard of the Megladon before. The Megladon is a prehistoric shark that is HUGE!

We’re talking HUGE!!!!!

This thing was enormous. And very cool!

There were also some fun, interactive exhibits for the kids to play with. They got to dig for dinosaur bones and put together dinosaurs from bones they had found. There was a cave for the kids to crawl through.

But my favorite part was definitely the room with all the stars. It was an exhibit featuring the beginning of the world – which of course was space and stars.

It was very cool to walk through this pitch-black room and see nothing but stars all around you. (my camera isn’t good enough to get a proper picture of this room, so you’ll have to go see it for yourself.

As far as science museums and history museums go, I can honestly recommend Thanksgiving Point’s Museum of Ancient Life as one of the best.

Traveling Exhibit

Just like the Museum of Natural Curiosity, the Museum of Ancient Life also has a sectioned off area for a traveling exhibit.

I love venues that have traveling exhibits like these. They make me feel like I get to see and explore something new regularly, even if I’ve been to the venue a hundred times before.

I appreciate them keeping locals in mind, as well as tourists.

Coding Adventure

This time around, it was a coding adventure exhibit where the kids got to explore and interact with a number of hands-on exhibits, all revolving around coding.

There were robots, remote control balls, codeable bumblebees, some STEAM shapes for building with, and a few other fun exhibits we didn’t get to try.

The kids spent more time here than we did at the main part of the museum this time around. They had so much fun playing with all the fun coding activities.

Mammoth Screen Movies

We haven’t had a chance to go to the Mammoth Screen Movies yet, but it is definitely on our to-do list. Nothing says documentary like a gigantic 3D screen about your favorite creatures.

Butterfly Biosphere

The Butterfly Biosphere is the newest exhibit at Thanksgiving Point – and it does not disappoint!

They jokingly call it a Bug Zoo – but really, that’s what it is!

There are bugs and insects of all kinds on display. I was especially surprised to see just how big an Elephant Beetle is!

They have regular ‘show-and-tell’ type things where their bug experts show the kids a few of their live bugs.

And there are interactive exhibits here too! Pretend you’re an ant and work with your other ant buddies to steal the picnic lunch. Or pretend you’re a ladybug in a bug jar and get a picture of your new home.

The Butterfly Biosphere just got a new leaf cutter ant exhibit that we are dying to go see. Hopefully we make it down there within a few weeks!

Conservatory

The best part about the Butterfly Biosphere was the Conservatory. The Conservatory is where all the butterflies were housed.

Imagine – Hundreds of live butterflies flying around your head, landing on your finger (or your nose!), and giving your toddler a case of the ‘Wow!’s. It was such a cool experience.

The environment they built for these butterflies is so beautiful. This was definitely our favorite part of the Butterfly Biosphere.

Identify all the different butterflies in the conservatory and learn about their lifecycle.

Costa Rica Climber

True to Thanksgiving Point style, there is (of course!) a kid-friendly play area inside the Butterfly Biosphere – Costa Rica Climber.

This 2-story treehouse is perfect for kids to run around in. My kids loved going down the slide and climbing back up again.

Plenty of bug-related dress-up costumes to try on too! A few of my kids may have transformed into beautiful butterflies while we were there…

Ashton Gardens

Ashton Gardens (aka Thanksgiving Point Gardens) is the home of the famous Tulip Festival.

Thanksgiving Point hosts a Tulip Festival every year. It’s probably one of Thanksgiving Point’s most famous events. People come from miles around to see the gardens decked out with tulips EVERYWHERE!

During the offseason though, Ashton Gardens are still beautiful.

Feed the giant koi at the koi pond. Check out the waterfall (from the top, the bottom, or even from behind) Learn about local plants and flowers. Walk through the rose garden maze. Enjoy the beautiful statues throughout the gardens.

It’s a beautiful place for the whole family to take a walk in any kind of weather.

Farm Country

Farm Country is a smaller but still really fun part of Thanksgiving Point. We are country folk at heart, so this might actually be our favorite part of Thanksgiving Point.

There are pony rides and wagon rides available.

If you go at the right time, you can help milk the cows. We’re unlucky enough to always show up at the wrong time for this. But one of these days, we’ll be there at the right time…

The animals have their babies every spring and you can go and see all the baby horses, cows, chickens, rabbits, lambs goats, and more.

The peafowl are beautiful and make the coolest noises. The horses (all the animals really) love to be pet and come right out to the fence when you walk by.

Other Activities

In addition to the five main venues at Thanksgiving Point, there are also family-friendly events held throughout the year. Some of these events are merely fun. But a lot of them offer educational opportunities at Thanksgiving Point.

Outdoor Movie Series

This summer, we’ve been going to the outdoor movie series at Thanksgiving Point.

We have been to several outdoor movie series throughout the country in our time. Some have been better than others. But the one at Thanksgiving Point has been our favorite.

Why?

Partly because of the crowds. The crowds at this event were not nearly as big as they are at other outdoor movie events. That was a nice change.

It was also nice that the kids could spend their time before the movie started exploring Ashton Gardens (where the movie was being shown) and we even bought some fish food so they could feed the fish at the koi pond. (very fun)

I also liked that there was a pre-movie show for our entertainment. It was SO nice not to have a million kids (okay, 6) asking me all night long ‘how much longer until the movie starts?’ Somebody with kids definitely planned this event.

Last week Thanksgiving Point brought in a fun improv group from the next valley over – Random Tangent. They were highly entertaining and very engaging – for the kids and the adults.

Fairy Tail Festival

Every summer Thanksgiving Point hosts a Fairy Tail Festival.

They bring in princesses you can meet, get pictures with, and talk to.

They bring in several bouncy houses for the kids’ entertainment. A life-sized Angry Birds slingshot game is set up for the kids to enjoy.

An enthusiastic storyteller paints a vivid picture of a child-friendly story.

Meet a mermaid or play on a giant pirate ship.

If you purchase a ticket before they sell out (we didn’t buy ours in time) you can even have a private princess tea party which I hear is magical.

Other activities held throughout the year include:

• Wizardly Birthday Party
• Garden of the Quilts
• Jigglefest
• Independence Day Party
• Timpanogas Storytelling Festival
• Renaissance Fair
• Summer Day Camps
• Maker Faire
• Luminaria (epic Christmas lights show)
• And More!

Homeschool Field Trips at Thanksgiving Point

As homeschoolers, we are always looking for a fun place to go on a field trip. And when we are not creative enough to come up with something else, it’s good to know that Thanksgiving Point is always there for us.

In fact, if you want to go on a field trip to Thanksgiving Point with your local homeschool co-op, or just a group of homeschooling friends, then check out the field trips section of the Thanksgiving Point website. They have some really great price points for field trip groups.

Or if you’d rather, Thanksgiving Point has regular homeschool days throughout the year where homeschoolers can get in at a great discount without having to plan an official field trip. Keep an eye on their Facebook page or their newsletter for the next upcoming homeschool day.

We’ve yet to learn everything there is to learn at Thanksgiving Point. So much knowledge to be gained in one location. Add that to the fact that we are making a series of Field Trip Curriculum, the beginnings of which we plan to revolve around this venue, and there are definitely educational opportunities to be had at Thanksgiving Point.

We have released a field trip curriculum for the yearly Cornbelly’s corn maze & pumpkin fest, as well as the yearly Thanksgiving Point Scarecrow Festival.

(we’ll keep you posted on future Field Trip Curriculums…)

Related Posts

Halloween at Thanksgiving Point
10 Road Trip Hacks for Traveling with Kids
Corn Maze Homeschool Unit Studies

Educational Thanksgiving Point Activities and Events