Awesome Adventures at the Smithsonian: The Official Kids Guide to the Smithsonian Institution Spiral-bound by Emily B. Korrell ( Smithsonian Books)

This is a must have if you are visiting the Smithsonian Museums in DC!! I ordered this book from Amazon so that my 8 year-old daughter and I could have a little knowledge before our vacation. It has many activities to work through and a lot of really neat facts about all of the Smithsonian museums. Most of the activities seem to apply more to your visit at the museums but it was nice to do some reading before we got there. They do have the guide available in the souvenir stores (or at least I saw it at the Natural History Museum) but I enjoyed having it earlier so that we were somewhat familiar with what we were going to be encountering.

I feel like my daughter was really engaged with the museums because she had something to relate things to. It is often challenging to keep kids entertained at museums for an extended length of time and this was the perfect activity for her interest. She really enjoyed the guide and I loved how involved she wanted to be.

I will say, that if you are wanting to use this book during your trip, you really need a full day at each museum. The activities are super fun but they do require time to get through them. The size of each museum is quite intimidating and I loved that this guide gave us some direction in approaching our visits. It is also nice because she could reflect on her day later that night at the hotel to finish up the activities and reflections pages.