I heard a rumour that there was a place in San Jose with a giant rubber duck sitting on the roof. Because Erin is a duck fiend...
...I knew that I was going to have to bring her to see this canary canard.
Attention! Alliteration Ahead!
Apparently, an acrylic aquatic avian adorns an awesome adolescent (and adult) amusement artifice adjoining an aerated area.
This place is the Children's Discovery Museum in San Jose, and I can't believe I waited so long to bring Erin here.
While plotting my zoo excursion earlier in the week I had also tossed around the idea of going to the CDM. Emily suggested we save the museum for the weekend so we could all go together for our first visit (we'd been to the zoo before as a family), so that's what we did.
It isn't free, and it isn't cheap ($8 each for us, and after Erin turns one it will be another $8 for her), but they do have annual memberships available. After today, I'm seriously considering one of the family memberships, but we're a little far for it to be a convenient, last-minute, what-do-we-do-today option.
But this place is great. From the baby storage lockers in the lobby
to the awesome crawling room within the pre-schoolers area
to the, um, super-cool Bench of Killing Time
and the..."Hey, free bell!"
All kidding aside, the crawling room alone was worth the price of admission. That's where we spent the majority of our time, and it was just one room within the pre-schoolers (0-4) area, The Wonder Cabinet, which also boasted a brief story time, a "let's dump sand everywhere" area, a couple of arts and crafts areas, and a kitchen playroom.
Then there is still the rest of the building: a theater, a bunch of cool gizmos, several widgets, a couple of doodads, and a face-painting room. I didn't take enough pictures to do it justice here, and we didn't spend enough time there outside of The Wonder Cabinet to get a really good sense of the age-appropriateness of some of the exhibits.
But we're going back.
7 comments:
Ok..that duck is AWESOME!!
I need one of those baby storage lockers but in Toddler and Adolescent girl sizes.
That is awesome...we have a children's museum here in Cleveland, but we haven't been yet. We also have the Great Lakes Science Center but that place can get expensive for a family of six...we'll get there eventually.
Explored our children's museum here in Charlotte, NC for the first time last week. It was incredible (and, I thought, incredibly expensive) and sounds very similar to the one you. We will also be going back to ours.
Holy cow, er, I mean, holy duck! Erin has certainly been a busy girl this weekend! First the zoo, then the museum. I bet she slept well! Have you taken her to an aquarium yet? My kids can't get enough of the penguins and seals at the New England Aquarium. My son will sit and watch the fish in the Giant Ocean Tank for hours, unless my daughter is yanking us to the top to watch the sea turtles being fed.
I wish we had a children's museum here. We just have a science center, and while it's a perfectly fine (and perfectly expensive) science center, there's a room where the kids can make huge bubbles that I've dubbed the "Please, Lord, let that wet stuff I just sat in be soap..." room.
I wouldn't have had to rename the room had I not seen a kid drop and christen the place the last time we were there.
Patti: definitely check it out. I was really really pleased and surprised.
jonmcp: yeah, I wish it didn't cost so much to get in, but on the inside I don't feel too ripped off. Except by the crappy fast-food they serve there. How about an apple or something, guys. Sheesh.
Mummaboo: We are members of the Monterey Bay Aquarium now. I think Erin has been there 3 times or so (loves jellifish so much her mom is planning a jellyfish party for her birthday this weekend). We've also been to the Aquarium of the Bay at Pier 39 in San Francisco. It has a great tunnel section where all the fish and things are swimming all around you.
FADKOG: I can hardly wait until she's old enough to like the science center. What I can wait for is for her to be old enough to think the science center is lame and she's going to go to the mall with her friends instead and can she have twenty bucks for stuff?
Love the alliteration!
How cool is that? My girl's favorite: horses. If you can find a giant horse on a building, WE ARE THERE.
cool! Our science centre has a neat play area for little kids, but we didn't have enough time to explore it to its fullest last time we went. I think we could have used another couple of hours, so I'm hoping we can do it again all three of us some day, maybe this summer, and stay longer.
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