Children's Museum

One of the days we spent with Betsy, Pete, and Henry involved Kathie and I spending the day with Henry, while his parents were off at work. A trip to the Kohl Children's Museum was, therefore, a requirement. Henry loves that place, and I do too, having gone there once before with Henry and Betsy. For Grandma Kathie, this was a first-time experience. Betsy and Pete have a membership at the museum. This entitles Henry and his guests to enter a half hour early. The place is literally swamped with kids when the regular opening occurs, so it is fun to have the place almost to oneself for a little while.

Grandma and Henry pose near the entrance to the museum. By the way, this is more an interactive, play-time, but very educational museum than it is a set of exhibits.


Henry has been to the museum so often and loves it so much, that he almost disappears in a blur once you pass the entrance. He knows where everything is and has definite favorites. Maybe because he wanted to impress his grandfather, Henry stopped first at a computer-based exhibit. The boy loves to press buttons! Among other things, we found all the letters for his name on the keyboard.


Next, what we found exciting was a gadget that I will call a "coin funnel." You drop coins down a slot, and they exit rolling on their edge onto a large funnel, where they go around and around and around. At the very bottom of the funnel, the coins have accelerated to a point where they are almost horizontal in the neck of the funnel but still rolling around and around. Finally, gravity defeats centrifugal force, and they fall to the bottom (safely into a fund for the museum, I presume). We didn't capture coins in action, but here is a shot of a coin launch and another of Henry focused on the traveling coin (with the required Decker-related tendency to have one's tongue out when engaged in thoughtful or intensive manual activity).



This part of the museum focused on physics and engineering. So Henry and I worked the generator to light up the model of the Sears Tower and also tried floating various shapes in a stream of air.



Each area of the museum is sponsored by an industry trade group or a company. One local company sponsors a play deli, where children can prepare sandwiches, serve them, and then go through the motions of cleaning up afterwards. Here is Henry making a sandwich for us. Again, help from that tongue is required.


He loves musical things. There is one room in the music area where you can enter and dance around. Your image is captured and displayed on a screen with all sorts of psychedelic effects--great for those of us from the 60s. There is no way to capture that here, but Henry loves it. I hope he doesn't become inhibited about dancing when he is older. I did catch this shot of him and Grandma playing with one of the many interesting percussion toys.


My favorite part of the museum, and maybe Henry's too, is the area sponsored by the local plumbing trades. There are all kinds of interesting things to do with water, most of which involve getting a little bit wet--hence, the supply of aprons for the kids. Here we are with the water cannons (shooting streams at bells and wind chimes) and various pumping devices.




There was lots more to do, but here is one last shot of Grandma and Henry operating a crane.


Finally, although this last picture has nothing to do with the museum, I can't help but include it. Henry loves Josey, but he is a little unsure of her, I guess because she is so much bigger than Franklin. Can you see that by looking at this picture?