Iowa Children's Museum

We were in Iowa this week for Marc's Grandpa's visitation and funeral. We had the whole day Wednesday before the visitation... Marc and Nathan wanted to shop for IA stuff and I have been wanting to take the kids to the Iowa Children's Museum for a while now. I recruited Aunt NeeNee to help and we had a great day! The museum was great. An added bonus was visiting on a week day--they were not too busy. We spent about 2 hours in the morning, took a lunch break and went back for over an hour and we still didn't visit all the exhibits! They had such a great variety of exhibits--my kids had a blast and it can really appeal to elementary school kids as well. Here are some of the things we did:

Art Studio: This was a HUGE room stocked with all kinds of art supplies. We were free to grab whatever we wanted. They have a wall of cubbies for you to stash your creations to dry and then pick them up before you leave.

Kinnick was thrilled to paint this dinosaur.

Macey loved crawling around and pulling things out of the bins.

I helped Sadie make a collage with all different types of stuff.

City Works--Hospital:

A big part of the first floor was an exhibit called "CityWorks"--they had a grocery store, hospital, pizza parlor, bank, and post office. Each place was well stocked with uniforms and tons of props. We didn't get to check them all out, but the hospital was one of the first places my kids wanted to visit. Kinnick loved driving the ambulance and Sadie loved being a doctor and a dentist.

Macey loved the baby dolls.

ABC Forest:

Kinnick found this little reading area complete with an abundance of books, couches, and a reading hide-out. He could have spent the whole day here! Sadie had fun doing some different alphabet activities while Kinnick read a few books.

ImaginAcers:

LOVED this place! This exhibit was for 5 and under (perfect for us!) It was set up like a farm with a gate that closed it off from the rest of the top floor. The kids got to plant vegetables in a garden, climb in the barn and play on the slides, dress up like animals, play with a wooden farm, and fish for letters.

Take Flight:

This exhibit was all about flying. It had lots of flight simulators that allowed you to drive an airplane or helicopter. It had a giant hot air balloon--kids could climb in the basket and it wobbled around like it was in the air. One of the coolest parts about this exhibit was that it was on both floors--to get down quickly you could ride the giant tube slide. My kids loved these little petal planes:

It's hard to tell, but Kinnick has on a little pilots jacket--too cute!

Museum "Pets":

At the entrance they had a huge tank with fish and another tank with a turtle. Kinnick loved the turtle!

City Works--Pizza Parlor:

This was probably my favorite exhibit. I helped show the kids how to make and cook their own pizzas, then I sat back in the restaurant and let them serve me.

PlayWorks Theater:

We spent a lot of time here! This was a huge theater/stage with LOTS of dress up clothes and props. They had puppets, masks, scenery, etc.

Sadie made friends with another little girl while we were playing here. I overheard her ask the girl her name and then they had the following conversation: Girl-"What's your name?" S-"Emma" Girl-"Really, I have a friend in my class named Emma." S-"Yep, that's my name."

Kinnick loved "getting me" with this dinosaur puppet.

Notion of Motion:

This was the last exhibit we visited. The kids loved it--they had all kinds of hands on experiments you could do to test the laws of motion. There were several different experiments that involved dropping golf balls on ramps, and also an exhibit that let you build your own cars (using different weights) and race them on huge ramps.

Sadie loved this climbing wall. She was so proud of making it to the top by herself.

And of course, Kinnick had to play at the train table. In this pic he's saying "Choo Choo!"