This past Friday we took a road trip to Rochester, NY to visit the Strong National Museum of Play. Erin was on break last week so I took the day off and we went with my mom as well as my sister-in-law and brother-in-law and their daughter.
The museum is a giant kids museum, that according to their website, “explores play in order to encourage learning, creativity and discovery”.
My first impression upon driving into the parking lot was amazement at how big the building was and how many cars were there. Once inside and
paid (kids under 2 are free, parents are 9.50) you can pretty much let the kids lead you through the museum. This was great as we don’t often get to do that and feel that we are always in environments where we constantly have to watch what they are doing and telling them “no” and “don’t touch that”. To let them just roam around and discovery things was a nice change of pace.
The first thing we checked out was the Sesame Street area. This included a partial replica of the set, Elmo’s World which was a replica
of Elmo’s room from the show and had a green screen setup that allowed the kids to be on TV with Elmo.
Another area the kids enjoyed was the trains area. Nick and Luke are currently obsessed with “cho-cho’s” so this was a natural hit. Once they discovered the giant train play set, I didn’t think we would see anything else in the place. They also had a train you could ride on (though it just goes in circles over and over again) and a model railroad running.
The museum also featured at least two baby play areas, for crawlers. These were walled off areas filled with foam mats and soft toys, that the younger ones could enjoy without being trampled by the older kids. Our 13 month old niece really enjoyed these areas.
For lunch we went to the food court, which included a Subway, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. There is also an actual operating diner car in the lobby of the museum. It was nice that we didn’t have to leave to get lunch, but the wait was very long. Next time I think we would bring our own lunch, which they don’t mind you doing and eating it in their large cafeteria area.
After lunch the boys needed a nap, so we pushed them in their stroller. This gave us adults time to check out the upstairs area of the museum which contained row after row of display cases filled with toys and collectibles from the 1800′s till today. It was an amazing collection and we all got to reminisce about old toys we had as kids. We also checked out the “Field of Play” exhibit. The boys were still sleeping through that, but it was okay because it was geared at older kids and was more science focused. Very cool though.
We spent most of the day there, and on the drive home, while looking at the museum map, realized we didn’t even see half the exhibits. The place is huge! I would highly recommend parents take their kids there. You will not regret it. Our boys are almost two and there was lots for them to enjoy. And since there are exhibits for older kids as well, its the type of place we can return to year after year and experience new things each time as they grow older.
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02 29th, 2008| 