The best way to teach your kids about our wild planet.

My children are fascinated by space at the moment. All they can talk about is planets, aliens and becoming astronauts, and I suppose it’s normal for children to be enthralled by the very idea of an expansive universe. But, lately I’ve just wanted to try to bring them back down to earth. Sure space is fascinating but there’s so many incredible things to see right here on the planet Earth.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of animals we have never laid eyes on before. We see all the usual suspects like dogs and cats and budgies, and then when we go to the zoo to see elephants and gorillas from a distance — a very large distance.

We’ve never stood next to a hippopotamus to comprehend just how big they are. We’ve never felt the skin of a shark to notice how hard and rough it is.

Until this weekend, when we did both of those things.

The Australian Museum gives your kids the opportunity to be up close and personal with over 400 animals. They can stand next to a giraffe and look up at how tall they really are and stare into the eyes of an incredibly intimidating saltwater crocodile.

“We could all fit in its stomach mum,” my son said. “You could be there, then dad could be there and then me, Giovanni and Caterina.”

“Yes darling, yes we could. How interesting,” I said, backing away from that particular display.

The Australian Museum is a beautiful building with four levels filled with so many strange and interesting things to behold. We didn’t need to line up for tickets for long but wouldn’t have minded if we had to because there’s a great video display giving a sample of all the amazing things we were about to see, including a gigantic spider which horrified me but delighted the kids.

It was hard to know where to begin at an exhibit like Wild Planet. There’s so much to see and learn.

If your children are anything like mine they get a little overexcited and simply race through exhibits, wanting to absorb as much as possible in the least amount of time. I let them, and then we headed to the museum cafe for a little pick-me-up — coffee, caramel slice, babycinos and popcorn — before making our way through again, expect more slowly this time, lingering at whichever display most caught their attention.

Giovanni spent a lot of time looking at the Tasmanian tiger, displaying a fierce face and sharp teeth. It was confronting, particularly because Tassie tigers are now extinct.

My son Philip was fascinated with a program that allowed you to see what would happen to Australia if sea levels rose. He made Bankstown an island and we talked about all the efforts that have been made to help conserve our planet so we can minimise the impact of erosion, flooding and the extinction of our animals and wildlife.

Everything from recycling to decreasing pollution started to make more sense to them. We have already lost so much in Australia and around the world, whatever we can do to help needs to be prioritised. By educating our children about the consequences of some of our actions, we can help ensure conservation work continues.

At the end of the day, every animal is important and every insect is important. They are all special and complex beings and seeing so many of them reduced to just a delicate little skeleton made that fact even more real.

We looked closely at a food chain display, talking about how everything from plant to animal is part of this incredible ecological system that is earth.

It’s such an amazing place and we are so lucky to witness such incredible animal life. Watching the kids’ eyes grow wider and wider with knowledge as they stared down the throat of a giant brown bear or compared their palm size to a gorilla’s was very special.

There’s no other way they could get so close.

The Australian Museum is open from 9:30am until 5pm every day except Christmas Day. Entry costs just $15 per adult and kids under 16 are free.

How do you teach your kids about the environment?