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Visiting Edinburgh with a preschooler? The Museum of Childhood is a FREE (please consider making a small donation if possible) attraction on Edinburgh’s famous Royal Mile, easy to overlook it’s placed about half way down. Spread over several floors the glass cases house antique toys, teddies and dolls. There are toys that young children will enjoy playing with including a dolls house and homemade fishing game along with several interactive exhibits. There is a small gift shop at the entrance/exit.

Enjoy a couple of hours here before heading to Monster Mash (5 minutes walk) for old-fashioned meals in an authentic setting. Served on your granny’s old dinner plates the speciality is sausages, mash and gravy served in several different flavours. Also on the menu, various pies, fish and haggis. Most main courses come in at under £6.

For a budget conscious day out in the heart of Edinburgh this combo is difficult to beat!

Photo by flickr user notcub

A quick heads-up. I found a great website for finding family days out wherever you are in the UK. Search by region, age and ‘indoors or outdoors’ to find the perfect day out.

Plum Baby, a company specialising in organic baby food has produced a collection of videos for babies available at plumvision. They’re pretty wacky, but strangely addictive?!? I need to get out more!

We took Erin to Dynamic Earth a couple of weeks ago.  Dynamic Earth is an education based attraction in the heart of Edinburgh, close to the Parliament building and Holyrood Palace.

Price

£9.50 for adults, £5.95 for children and free for under three’s.  Clearly I was pleased with not having to pay for Erin although I felt £9.50 was a little steep.  However, if you make a donation (about £1) you get a voucher back to use in the cafe worth a few pounds.  I think an entry fee of £7-£7.50 would be a fairer price.

What’s involved

You ‘travel’ through a time machine, and discover what the world was like 15,000 million years ago! You ‘move’ through time, experiencing an earthquake, ‘flying’ over ice-capped mountains and feeling a real iceberg.  There are plenty of interactive features throughout which Erin really enjoyed.  Towards the end you move through a rainforest before entering the futuredome, which reminded me a lot of the atttractions in Orlando, Florida.

Facilities

As you’d expect Dynamic Earth is fully set up for babies and children of all ages.  The cafe was a bit of an unexpected surprise, we only had a few slush puppies, however I did take it upon myself to check out the food which looked very good - curry, chilli, baked potatoes etc, main courses seemed to be quite good value with everything I saw under £6.

Overall

A nice afternoon out but entry was a bit expensive.