Taking the Kids: Visiting a children’s museum

The Brooklyn Children’s Museum is the oldest in the country, dating back to 1899, while the massive Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, the world’s largest, is often ranked number one as the best for kids.

Both offer exhibits that can spur conversations with young children and help them to better understand the world around them.

World Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, for example, lets kids play in kid-sized shops based on real ones in Brooklyn’s multicultural neighborhoods, helping them to better understand the importance of such diverse communities as they become storekeepers, bakers, shoppers, grocers and more.

At the Indianapolis Children’s Museum, the Power of Children shares stories of Anne Frank, Ruby Bridges, who in 1960, as a first-grader, was one of the first Black students to integrate the white New Orleans school system, and Ryan White, who in the ’80s fought fear and misinformation about AIDS.

Ryan contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion to treat his hemophilia and fought to be allowed to return to school after being suspended, making him famous around the world. Learn also about Malala Yousafzai, the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, who has fought for the education of women and children in northwest Pakistan where the Taliban had banned girls from school.

Put yourself in the shoes of a child who changed history or discover how you can become an “everyday superhero.”

Also seek out special exhibits and discovery rooms in larger art and science museums. Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute, for example, has the art of the brick by artist Nathan Sawaya that is a collection made exclusively from LEGO bricks, complete with a 9,000-square-foot brick play space.

The Seattle Museum of History and Industry has a Kid-Struction Zone designed for kids 2 to 7 and their caregivers, enabling the littlest builders and architects to build with Duplo’s, work at the tool bench, magnet boards and felt table.

In San Francisco, the California Academy of Sciences has CURIOSITY GROVE. The animal murals illustrate California’s diverse forest ecosystems while the interactive science-themed games and toys are designed for little learners. Don’t miss the new interactive California: State of Nature, which explains the connections between people, places and animals.

And in Washington, D.C., the National Museum of American History boasts Wegmans 1,700-square-foot Wonderplace, the first exhibit on the National Mall designed for children 0 to 6. There is a crawler area for children just learning to walk complete with large mirrors, a portrait gallery devoted to children with reproductions from the museum’s collections, a farm where children will learn where food comes from, a mini kitchen modeled after Julia Child’s kitchen, and more.

Just one caveat: leave when the kids get tired and hungry. There’s always next time.

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(For more Taking the Kids, visit www.takingthekids.com and also follow TakingTheKids on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram where Eileen Ogintz welcomes your questions and comments. The fourth edition of The Kid’s Guide to New York City and the third edition of The Kid’s Guide to Washington D.C. are the latest in a series of 14 books for kid travelers published by Eileen.)