A Little Adventure

Hey everyone so recently I attended the Discovery Center in Rockford Illinois. let me say it was amazing. They have permanent plus changing exhibits at this center. In summer they have a large outdoor interactive water play area with a dinosaur dig area (which I am looking forward to taking my goddaughter to) and many other interactive activities. I am studying ECE so I kind of nerded out a little bit when I saw what the Discovery Center had to offer for children. First off the price is about $8 for children and adults which isn't bad it's cheaper than the museum in Chicago. Secondly everything they had was hands on for children. Hell, I even had fun I was down there playing with my goddaughter on her level. This place is so great adult can have as much fun as the kids do. At first my goddaughter, wasn't sure what to make of the place she's only 4 years old and she has never gone to a museum or anything similar to it. So she was hesitant when I told her go ahead and play, just go at it. They have this cool spiral staircase that on one side you can go up the stairs like normal and on the other side for children it has a couple holes through it that the children climb down and up through. After she decided to try it I had a hard time getting her out of it. upstairs they have a skeleton that demonstrates all the bones and how the bones move with your body as you move. they also have fake bones that you can match up to a picture of a adult skeleton and it has all the technical terms for it. There is also a dramatic play area a housekeeping area there is this new electricity area that's coming up it looked awesome I totally wanted to check it out but its still not open it supposed to open in mid-march. So I'm going to have to take another trip out there. also they had a water area with boats and sponges and all these water doodads. the nice thing about it is that they provided smocks for the children to go and put on. They also have this large dance area that lights up and the goal of each game is for the child to dance on it and the lights light up on a different part of the floor going with the song or game. it's very interactive and it requires a child to move their entire body. I got tired out trying it out with my goddaughter. They also have this huge wooden dollhouse there's nothing there fancy about it but its big and has all the pieces for the kids to go ahead and use. I also love that there's a farm area in the center there's two large sized cat was on display that you can hook up with the materials and actually milk them. they also have a large tractor that you can climb into and sit inside of and see you all the levers. everything that they have including the bathrooms is child sized. There is a stall that is just for children where the toilet is low enough for them and a sink that is low enough for them and then an adult stall with a regular sized toilet regular size sink. They also had a camping dramatic play with the kids can go pretend fishing and all these elaborate puzzle that they can do with big pieces and small ones everything upstairs was age appropriate for a kid ages 3 to 5 and then they also had a section for 18 month old kids and younger. Downstairs it was more for the older kids that are 5 up to 12 they have this pulley area chair. The kid sits in it and pulled on the string which pulled them up for safety it does have a seat belt for the kids to be strapped in so they don't fall off when their mid air. They also had a huge lite brite type of thing which is pretty cool. I was just so amazed with all the manipulative's, gross and give motor activities as well as arts and crafts. They offer a lot for developing children's basic areas of development.