Have You Been to a Children's Museum?

We have two, aren't we special. :) The Magic House is probably more of what you are thinking of but damn City Museum is better.

City museum is like art got together with a crazy dream and made a climbing place.

LOVE children's museums! I love all of the hands-on things they have. We've been hitting them up (in various places) since my now almost 4 year old was about 16 months. She still loves going to them. My second daughter just had her first trip to one in late Nov and loved it as well. I wish we had one here in El Paso, but we don't. I'm taking my girls with me to Denver in a couple of weeks and we've already got plans in place to visit the children's museum there! Well worth the investment to get kids excited about learning early on and to help maintain that interest!

You can quote if you want.

Some of my favorite memories growing up involve me and my aunt at the childrens museum! I can't wait to take my son there this summer! :)

Denver has a fantastic Children's Museum. When we lived there, when the kids were young, I bought a membership so we could go whenever we wanted. We spent many awesome hours at that place!

Philadelphia, where we live now, has something called the "Please Touch Museum". I've never taken the kids there (they're too old now), but my niece has been and she loved it, too.

Philly also has The Franklin Institute, which isn't a "Children's Museum" per se, but has so many hands on exhibits and interesting places for kids to learn cool things. Adults, too!

I think what makes a successful museum for kids is this: the kids have to love it and be entertained, sure, but the PARENTS also have to find it enjoyable. I think it can be tough to entertain both young children and their parents for hours on end, but the places I mentioned do just that very well.

Good luck with your museum!

There's a kids' museum in Raleigh, NC called Marbles. It's mostly interactives. My daughter is 11 and still gets a kick out of the giant pig suspended from the ceiling (don't ask...you have to check it out).

One thing to think of, as you plan this museum, is whether you are going to have activities and/or exhibits that are for kids older than about nine. Most children's museums are really not museums as much as great play places for younger kids, but by age eight to 11 most kids are over them. Finding fun experiences for kids in that age range can be very tough (we're lucky in our area because the "regular" museums have a lot of kid-friendly things right for older kids and tweens). So think about the age range and whether you want to include anything for slightly older kids.

we took my daughter to the liberty arts science museum in Jersey City when she was only two and she was BLOWN AWAY but everything there. She could touch everything and learn about a ton of stuff. Even the adults that came with us (that are big kids themselves) loved being able to touch things and push buttons without getting in trouble. THere were a TON of class trips there when we went and I know of many playgroups that we have had at a Childrens museum. Especially in the winter time when there is nothing to do the museum is a great place to bring your children.

I am a huge HUGE fan of children's museums. It teaches kids that museums are fun places, not boring!! The experience opens them to learning in a new environment, to embracing discovery, and to thinking in new ways about their every day environment. My boys, now 2 and 5, have been to children's museums in Portland (Maine, not Oregon), Vermont, Boston, and Tucson in addition to our local one in Phoenix. They have all offered unique learning experiences and a ton of fun! I will give you a quick positive from each- Portland has a great fire truck/firehouse set up that takes kids through receiving a 911 call, getting suited up, and driving the truck to the fire. They also have an amazing room with recorded whale song- my 2 year old went in there and his little mouth hung open for about five minutes straight! VT- We visited ECHO the last time that my boys saw their Nopa before he passed away, so that has a special place in my heart. He built castles with them with magnetic blocks, watched the bubble tower, and explored the underwater shipwreck. Boston- my older son was almost 3 at the time and insisted that everything in the pretend store cost "90 bucks." We had a great time trying to explain what overpriced meant!! Tucson has an amazing "farm to table" room where the kids can pick fruit off magnetic trees, pay for it at the grocery store, and take it to the kitchen to "cook" it. Both boys spent nearly an hour in this room alone. Phoenix has a kid-sized play house that they create each year out of heavy-duty cardboard. Each day has a "color" and the kids get to paint the house. We went on a green day, and I think my purse still has the green specks to prove it! The best part, IMO, is seeing the house transform, looking at the change created by different colors and thickness in paint layers, and looking at the cross-sections of old houses. It actually creates a great geology lesson, showing how sedimentation works!
I have had such a great time with my kids in each museum, I really can't imagine why parents would find them boring? Maybe I have just been lucky with these particular museums??

We love the children's museum here. Everything is hands on so the kids can touch, climb and generally interact with everything. Additionally, the one here does NOT allow adults in unless they have a child with them.

My kids 4 and 6 love the museums that have the supermarket exhibits. I've been to Miami's, Chicago's and a few small ones in my area. They are great when the weather is too hot to be outside and they are educational as well.

I've been to a few. It's such a great activity for kids. It's wonderful to watch kids learn just by playing. They don't even realize they're learning something. I love the museums that have hands on learning actvities.

The Montshire Museum in Norwich, VT is fabulous. It has many exhibits and hands on activities for children from toddlers to middle school age children. It also has a great outdoor area, with many exhibits. There's a large room that's available for special activities and lectures and has lots of tables so it's a good place for a large group to eat lunch. Better yet, is the large open space and picnic tables.

There was a children's museum in West Hartford, with a large whale out front.. We went as a family and had a great time. My girls also went with their Girl Scout troop for a sleepover It's now new and improved and located in Hartford as a science museum. I haven't been there yet, but have only heard great things. Some of my daughters friends (high school and college age) really enjoy the museum.

Kid City in Middletown, CT advertises itself as a children's museum. IMO there's nothing "museum" about it. It's just a giant indoor playground. (it may have changed as I haven't been there in years). It's designed for little kids (ages 2 to 6), and has lots of play type activies for them, but really nothing for older children.

Probably not much quote, but feel free.

My kids are older now, but we've been to children's museums in St. Louis, Chicago and Ann Arbor, in addition to being members of our local (ST. Paul) Children's Museum for years. Maybe there's been others I can't remember right now. We've loved them all! (Jo--we've been to both of your children's museums and enjoyed them both, but agree I've never seen anything quite like the City Museum. I find it difficult to even describe it. I sent some friends there and they loved it too.)

In Chicago, on a family trip, I took my then-7-almost-8-year-old to the children's museum on Navy Pier instead of the King Tut exhibit at the Natural History Museum. My MIL acted as if I was ruining his life because the children's museum wasn't nearly as "cultural." He LOVED it! It turned into his favorite memory and experience of the trip. He still talks about it and he's 13.

I agree with the others that interactive exhibits are the best. If you can combine an exhibit with climbing or some way to get exercise that's best of all.

We loved Port Discovery in Baltimore, I especially like the ancient Egyptian area, my son loved the climbing structure and my hubby loved the water room!

We lived in Indiana when my daughter was about 18 months and we visited the children's museum there quite often. It was HUGE and so much fun. It had many different levels and tons to look at and do on each level. By far the best children's museum we have ever been to. We live in Fort Worth now and the new one here just doesn't even compare.

We visited one in NYC with my then 4.5 year old son. They had a lot of interactive exhibits. That's the key. Hands on is what kids like. If they can't play with it, climb on it, climb in it, flip pictures, press buttons, etc., it won't be fun.

We took our granddaughters to the Children's Museum in Pueblo, Colorado, and all of us had a great time.

http://www.sdc-arts.org/buellchildrensmuseum.html

I wish grownup museums were as much fun! Lots of hands-on projects, a variety of learning opportunities (including some dance aerobics the day we were there), very friendly staff, and terrific layout - easy for children and their grownups to get around. Even the entrance was a treat!

Our Children's museum started off pretty small.. It has always had an active schedule, and is really supported by the community. They are now raising money to open an even bigger location. It serves children from 6 months up to about 6th grade. There are spaces to even rent for parties, events, sleepovers. There are lots of ways to volunteer. Classes, field trips..

It started off as the Austin Children's Museum, it is now called the
Dell Discovery Center.. Yes, lots of money donated from the Dell Foundation.

Our daughter also loved the Houston Children's museum

here is a link to the Austin childrens Museum.
http://www.austinkids.org/About-Us.aspx

We went to the Children's Museum in Myrtle Beach on a rainy day when our son was 7.
They had a lot of cool stuff donated by doctors and dentists who were upgrading/modernizing their offices.
My son sat me in a dentists chair and pretend operated on my teeth.
Then he had a ball with the operating room equipment.
They had lots of hands on stuff and a hula hoop on string in a tire cut in half filled with bubble solution - you stand inside the hula hoop and slowly raise it by pulling the string and you end up standing inside a bubble.

http://www.cmsckids.org/our-exhibits.php

http://www.cmsckids.org/about.php

We've had a membership at the Children's Museum in St. Paul, MN since my boys were tiny. We used it a TON when we lived close, now we get there a few times a year.

My children's favorites are not usually the traveling exhibits (although they are fun). They love the natural exhibit. They have a giant ant hill to crawl through, a badger (or some rodent) home to crawl through, pretend trees with costumes of animals to wear and animal puppets to play with, and a little running creek with real water and toy animals (lizards, fish, frogs) to play with in the water. They also have a weather station where you can move some big clouds and make it "storm". My kids (now aged 7, 6, and 4) all LOVE this.

They also love the "construction/warehouse" portion, and the "city main street" with a kitchen to play in and other fun spaces to play dress up and pretend.

You can quote me if you want, I'm not sure how useful my quotes are :)

I see that you are from Purchase - or perhaps were from there. I guess you never went to Stepping Stones in CT? It's wonderful. Yes, do all that you can to open a children's museum. And the more they can touch, the better.

Take a look online at the Please Touch museum in Philly. Awesome!

I have been to a number of children's museums including Pittsburgh, NYC and Asheville NC. I have been uniformly unimpressed. The science centers I have been to (Pittsburgh, Liberty Park NY/NJ, the insectarium in New Orleans) have been vastly better - for all ages from toddler up.

It seems to me that many children's museums focus on interactive play (blocks, climbing, tunnels, etc) while science centers have the same degree of interaction but also focus on the application of principles - for example - children's museum has soft pieces to put together to make an airplane - science center has pieces to put together PLUS a wind tunnel to try them out and LEARN how changing the wings, shape, etc affects how the plane flies.

We have a children's museum here. http://childrensmuseum.com/ My boys loved it when they were younger. We had a family membership and went often. The problem I had with it was there was absolutely nothing for an adult to do or look at. I found it very boring. Now that the kids are seven and ten we go nature/history museum and the planetarium instead.

The Indianapolis Children's Museum is the largest in the country, and we've been repeatedly (I used to go when I was little, too). There is an AMAZING children's museum in California that I can't remember the name of, of course, but it was aimed at children 1 - 4/5, which is so nice since so many museums I've been to mostly have stuff for the older kids. The Cincinnati Children's Museum is fun but overpriced - make sure that whatever you charge is equivalent to the time and play that children will get out of it, because I (for one) resented having to pay high amounts for two adults when none of the activities were adult/child interactive.

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The Indianapolis Children's Museum is the largest in the country, and we've been repeatedly (I used to go when I was little, too). There is an AMAZING children's museum in California that I can't remember the name of, of course, but it was aimed at children 1 - 4/5, which is so nice since so many museums I've been to mostly have stuff for the older kids. The Cincinnati Children's Museum is fun but overpriced - make sure that whatever you charge is equivalent to the time and play that children will get out of it, because I (for one) resented having to pay high amounts for two adults when none of the activities were adult/child interactive.

www.glazermuseum.org and chicago kids museum are my favorite.

We belong to a children's museum here in Connecticut, Steppingstones Children's Museum. Honestly I thought my 2 and 3 year old would get bored, because they go every week. But that is not the case. They love it. There is a whole water play area with tubes and spouts and waterfalls which is hard to explain until you see it but it involves kids playing with water without getting soaked. They have an area in which a projector makes images on the floor so they floor actually changes colors and pictures. It is all extremely interactive and they change exhibits all the time.