Children’s museums make learning fun
Three giggling girls dance around a swirling white column of vapor, taking turns stepping into the “tornado” like little Dorothys bound for Oz. Are they learning about severe weather, or just playing?
Does it matter?
Play is the work of children, and at a children’s museum, learning and fun entwine in exhibits designed for little hands and budding minds. The tornado at SciTech Hands On Museum in Aurora is just one example. Chicago and its suburbs are blessed with several museums where kids get interactive with science, art, mathematics and language in spaces designed to spark imagination and creativity. These aren’t “don’t touch” exhibits. Kids go hands-on, crawl, jump and maybe get a little wet. Parents and caregivers are encouraged to join in, and the goal at the end of the day is for everyone to go home happy, having learned something new while having a good time.
DuPage Children’s Museum
301 N. Washington St., Naperville
dupagechildrensmuseum.org
(630) 637-8000
$9.50, seniors $8.50
The museum began as a series of traveling exhibits that roamed the western suburbs in station wagons in 1988. It took up temporary quarters in Elmhurst and then Wheaton before moving into the renovated Moser Lumber building in Naperville in 2001. Designed for children from birth to age 10, its core focus is ages 2 to 7, though three Young Explorers areas are adapted for infants to 24 months.
Six Learning Neighborhoods are designed to inspire creativity and problem solving while fostering education in math, science and art. In Build It, kids don safety goggles to hammer, saw and drill with real tools and wood, going through about 20,000 pounds of recycled wood a year. In Creativity Connections, they play with light and shadows, including an exhibit that allows them to “freeze” their own shadow. Math Connections helps kids explore patterns, dimensions and shapes while playing with art, blocks and balance mechanisms that even a 1-year-old can relate to. “Math for this age group has to be internalized,” says museum marketing director Alison Segebarth. A teeter-totter, for example, could be “the first internalization of algebra.”
In Make it Move, kids make balls roll, jump, swerve and drop along ramps and pathways they create. Kids get blown away in AirWorks with its walk-in wind tunnel. Things can get a little wet in WaterWays. Kids don waterproof smocks to build and play with objects while standing at a water table. They also can make bubbles, including some so large a child can fit inside. A bubble booth even fits a child in a wheelchair.
The entire museum is wheelchair accessible and open to children with disabilities at any time. A once-a-month program, Third Thursdays, is especially for families with children with autism spectrum disorders, visual or mobility impairments.
Chicago Children’s Museum
700 E. Grand Ave., Chicago
chicagochildrensmuseum.org
(312) 527-1000
$12, seniors $11
Occupying three floors of the west end of Navy Pier, the museum has 15 permanent exhibits plus changing exhibits that expose kids to science, math, literacy and cultural diversity.
The museum was founded in 1982 by the Junior League and in 1995 moved to Navy Pier where it became the second most-visited children’s museum in the nation. A planned move to Grant Park has been stalled by litigation, but museum executives now say they want the museum to remain at Navy Pier as part of the pier’s revitalization.
Dads seem to have as much fun as kids in Inventing Lab, where they work together to transform foam wings into flying machines they launch from two stories above. Models of the Willis Tower and John Hancock Building in the Skyline area inspire kids and parents to use real tools and materials to build their own structures in a room with windows overlooking the Chicago skyline and lakefront.
In Play it Safe, developed by the Chicago Fire Department, kids learn to escape a “smoke-filled” bedroom, play dress-up with child-size firefighter uniforms and slide down a brass firehouse pole. Waterways engages raincoat-clad kids in interactive water play while junior paleontologists dig for bones in Dinosaur Expedition, using brushes to remove “dirt” (shredded rubber) in an excavation pit. In the BIG Backyard, kids use video monitors to fly a bug over the Chicago skyline.
The newest exhibit, Michael’s Museum, opened in May with more than 100 collections of miniatures, trinkets and toys that Evanston resident Michael Horvich began collecting as a child growing up in the 1950s. While kids inspect the tiny objects, adults take a walk down memory lane as they examine marbles, tops, toy wagons, cars and whistles, including an Oscar Mayer Weiner whistle.
While exhibits are targeted for birth through age 10, seven have infant and crawler play areas and two are designated just for preschoolers: Kids Town with a mini CTA bus, and Treehouse Trails with an old-fashioned, kid-size log cabin. The Pritzker Playspace, a workshop space for wee ones and their caregivers, is open for a portion of each day.
Art workshops are held in the separate Kraft Artabound Studio on the first floor.
Legoland Discovery Center
601 N. Martingale Road, Schaumburg
legolanddiscoverycenter.com
(847) 592-9700
$15, adults $19 (discount online)
Part indoor amusement park, part museum, Legoland contains more than 3 million Lego bricks and is divided into nine attractions where guests can climb aboard a ride, see a show, view Lego creations and build their own. Though it’s designed for ages 3 to 10, “if you’re a huge Lego fan, it doesn’t matter how old you are,” says marketing manager Amy Walgren.
Scattered around the premises are figures created by master builders: an oversized giraffe marking the entrance, a huge head of Albert Einstein with moving eyes just inside, and life-size figures of President Obama, Harry Potter, Darth Vader and Batman. The average six-foot figure takes six people more than a month to build. In Jungle Expedition, you can see and touch Lego animals, including a tiger and cubs, a hippo with gaping mouth, a giant tarantula, a monkey swinging from a branch. Miniland is a miniature Chicago with Willis Tower, Navy Pier and other elements of the Chicago skyline in more than 1 million Lego bricks.
Kids can pick up a few tips from a master builder while putting their own model together in the Master Model Builder’s Workshop. At Lego Racers, they build a Lego car and race it on a speed track. In the Construction Site they can use a crane, wrecking ball and other equipment to build a city while letting off steam in a climbing area. DUPLO Village, with oversized bricks, is a built-it area for the youngest guests.
When they are ready for a little adventure, guests can take the Dragon Ride into a medieval castle and go round and round on the Technicycle, pedalling up toward the second-floor ceiling. Lego Studios puts on 4D shows and the Lego Factory Tour is an interactive look inside a mock Lego factory that tells an amusing story of how Legos are made.
Kohl Children’s Museum of Greater Chicago
2100 Patriot Blvd., Glenview, kohlchildrensmuseum.org
(847) 832-6600
$9.50, seniors $8.50
The only Chicago-area institution named among the top 10 children’s museums in the U.S. in 2011 by Parents magazine, Kohl continues to grow and add new programs, largely through the help of business sponsors. Founded in 1985 in Wilmette, it moved in 2005 into a large, custom-built, environmentally friendly building on the site of the former Glenview Naval Air Station.
All exhibits integrate science, math, social studies or language skills recommended by state of Illinois Learning Standards. In the Car Care exhibit kids can strap their parents into a giant car seat, drive through a carwash, and change tires of a child-size car. Other exhibits allow kids to crank a wheel to generate electricity for a pretend John Hancock Center, shingle the roof of a house, dig in play dirt to find worms, and build a boat and then test its speed on a water track.
Weather permitting, Habitat Park is open for kids to wander an outdoor sculpture garden, find their way through a prairie grass maze and paint water designs on slate walls.
In the Pet Vet area, they can nurse sick or injured stuffed animals back to health on examining and operating tables. Taking the nurturing concept a bit further is the Baby Nursery, which opened in May in partnership with Advocate Lutheran General Children’s Hospital and Advocate Hope Children’s Hospital. Stethoscopes, syringes, reflex hammers and X-ray views are used to diagnose and treat baby doll “patients.” Other corporate-sponsored exhibits include a play grocery store and sandwich shop. The newest exhibit, Science + You, opened in July. Designed in conjunction with scientists at Abbott, the global health care company, it features a child-size laboratory with video microscopes, a test kitchen to make healthy soup from the five food groups, and a demonstration area where visiting Abbott scientists can perform fun, interactive experiments.
SciTech Hands On Museum
18 W. Benton St., Aurora
scitechmuseum.org
(630) 859-3434
$8, seniors $7
Fermilab physicist Edmund Malamud founded this science museum in 1987 in the belief that each generation of scientists must inspire the next. With more than 200 hands-on exhibits on three floors of an old post office building along the Fox River, children find plenty of opportunities for inspiration.
Unlike most children’s museums, SciTech targets older kids, from about 6 to 14. “It sort of picks up where the DuPage Children’s Museum leaves off,” says marketing director Gary Cudworth. A separate area, Kidspace, is great for under-6 siblings who tag along.
Weather exhibits, in addition to the tornado, demonstrate how wind causes drifting sand dunes and how Doppler radar tracks storms. Kids can test their strength to see how pulleys work, how fast they can throw a baseball using radar to measure speed, and how they can generate enough electricity to illuminate light bulbs by pedalling a bicycle. They can strike bars on a large xylophone using letters of the alphabet for notes to play songs such as “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
In the center of the museum, a hot-air balloon can be inflated to rise into a second-story atrium. Space exploration exhibits include a solar telescope and a scale where kids can use wooden apples of various weights to compare the weight of the planets, discovering that Jupiter weighs way more than Mars. How do astronauts get clean water in space? An exhibit demonstrates how they use filters to clean recycled water. An interactive machine displays the colors of gases — helium, hydrogen, mercury — that make up the stars.
Other exhibits demonstrate gyroscopes, pendulums, magnets, fiber optics and polarizing filters.
Wonder Works, a Children’s Museum
6445 W. North Ave., Oak Park
wonder-works.org
(708) 383-4815
$5
This small museum dates back to 1991 when a group of volunteers opened the Children’s Museum of Oak Park. After losing its lease, it reopened in 2003 in a new building with its new name. Five “experience zones” are designed for kids from birth to age 8. At an outdoor Organic Garden, kids can help start seedlings in spring and assist in the harvest in summer and fall. Some of the produce is donated to the local food pantry. Indoors, the Farm to Market exhibit teaches kids where their food comes from as they weigh vegetables, count chickens and feed a cow.
A grant from the Oprah Winfrey Foundation made the Lights, Camera, Action! exhibit possible. Kids can put on a puppet show, work the lights or the sound onstage. The set doubles as a space for visiting professional storytellers and children’s entertainers.
North Avenue Art Works is the museum’s hands-on art studio, Build It! Allows kids to become construction workers, architects and engineers, and in the Great Outdoors they can climb a tree house and sleep in a tent.