local things to do with small people: Discovery Museums

[psocoptera]

Went to this two-part museum out in Acton today. Overall: one thumb up.
Details:
Getting there: I drove, because I'm lazy and/or hate the earth. In fact, it looked like it would be accessible by commuter rail, South Acton stop on the Fitchburg line (pick it up in Porter, Belmont, or Waltham). They do have free parking which was nice.
Cost: $10.50/person, including kids over 1. I paid half-price with a library pass.
What's there: we spent most of our time in the Children's Museum, because that's what was open when we got there. It's in an old house, and has maybe a dozen different themed rooms - trains, balls on tracks, water, submarine, jungle, kitchen, infant room, light and color, etc, roughly split overall between pretend-play and simple manipulables.

Junie particularly liked the rainbow bridge in the colors room (walk up three steps, each of which lights up when stepped on, then go down a short slide), one of the things to roll balls down (one of the simpler ones - just a plastic hose wrapped around a post in a helix, but she did it over and over), and the water table. She also spent quite a long time contemplating entering the train - she really didn't want to go in there while other kids were in there, but every time I noticed it was empty and took her over there, some other kid would notice train action and race over to join in, and then she would back off. (I did eventually get her up there despite the unfortunately off-putting help of one very friendly bigger kid who was trying so hard to be nice and encouraging to a little one, at which point we had fun with homophones: a little door opened to a compartment for "coal" (black beanbags), which I explained was coal, to run the engine, blah blah blah. She started happily taking them in and out and then announced she was doing laundry. Er, what? I asked. Cold, she said, cold laundry! Well, we do take that in and out... presumably at some point later on she'll figure out trains don't run on laundry?)

We were getting a bit tired and floppy by the time the Science Museum opened, but we surveyed it for future reference. Looked like it was mostly focused on light and sound, waves and pendulums, some more ball-rolling stuff, as opposed to natural-history sort of stuff (rocks and leaves and bones, although there were a few bits of that too). A very cool music-sound display with different playable organ pipes that I would have liked longer with. Maybe the coolest thing was this swing table for making pendulum-drawings with the help of a staff member - you set the table moving and then they lowered a pen and the paper went around under it. Ours was this gorgeous purple teardrop, and I'm really bummed that I forgot it in the "drawings to pick up when you leave" box while focused on getting Junie out to the car without a meltdown. Oh well, we'll have to go back someday.

The bad: There's nowhere to eat indoors. Picnic tables outside, which doesn't help if you didn't bring warm enough jackets. Because I'm kind of a jerk, we had our lunch sitting on the coat&boot bench in the lobby of the Children's Museum, where food was allowed if not precisely welcome. I guess we also could have gone back to the car. There's also only one bathroom in the Children's Museum (one toilet, one sink, one changing table). We didn't have a problem but if it had been more crowded that might have been a hassle - a changing table that could be used while someone else used the toilet would double throughput. The Science Museum had an actual public restroom with multiple stalls, but the multiple was "two". So, only one thumb up for these practical reasons (South Acton is also kind of far out there, whether by car or train), but a lot of fun in its contents.

Comments

[gannet.livejournal.com]

Dang about the bathroom situation; that's pretty bad.

The food situation is pretty common for kids' museums, unfortunately. Ours has a cafe--no outside food. They don't object to snacks, though--I think they know that littles can't manage otherwise.

Sounds like a pretty good museum, though!

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

They were pretty serious about the no food policy - signs posted all over the place. I respect that, just, as you say, littles can't manage without snacks (and some of us bigs can't either).

[gannet.livejournal.com]

Wow - ours only has the food policy at the front door. Ours also has animals and is quite reasonably concerned about illicit feeding.

[gallian.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I called them a number of years ago about bringing my students, but we ultimately decided they were too inaccessible (physical building accessibility) and age-inappropriate for the older students (teenagers,) so we never actually ended up going, even though the price was right.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

The Children's Museum would definitely be inaccessible (steep, narrow staircases, no elevators) and age-inappropriate. The Science Museum, though, I don't know. There was an elevator, and most of the exhibit floors looked navigable on wheels (there were some alcoves that might not be). Don't remember about the walk to the building. I thought some of the exhibits looked interesting to me as a grownup, but then, I like science museums. It's definitely not as slick in production quality as a big museum, I can see where teenagers might just roll their eyes.