The Mace Brown Museum of Natural History in the heart of downtown Charleston, South Carolina was a little deceptive to me at first, because it is actually just one floor inside the College of Charleston. I assumed it would be a larger, more grand permanent museum, but it is not particularly big. On the bright side, it is completely free. We were in the area, and my son absolutely adores dinosaurs, so I knew this would be right up his alley.

When you first walk into the College of Charleston, they have dinosaur statues right away to grab your attention toward the museum. My son had a lot of fun with the Velociraptor statues, which look pretty lifelike, assuming the animal was not actually feathered like we now believe many Late Cretaceous dinosaurs were.

I will say that despite being small, it is packed with a lot of different fossils. Since it is a natural history museum and not just a dinosaur museum, there are more animals than just the famous creatures whose name means “terrible lizard.” Alex was not as interested in the fossils as I hoped he would be, but he still had a good time looking at them.

They also have a small sand pit near the entrance where kids are allowed to take one fossil home. Since it is completely free, the fossils available are pretty mediocre and a bit underwhelming. Still, Alex had more fun playing in the sand itself than with the fossil he ended up taking home.

As we were leaving, we almost missed the giant dinosaur statues in the garden behind the entrance. My son Alexander was absolutely thrilled to see them. He ran up to them and tried to touch them, but I managed to stop him. Even so, it ended up being one of the best experiences of his little three year old life.