Visiting WOW! with Young Children

WOW! Children’s Museum hosts a wide variety of activities and sensory experiences designed with the young child in mind. There are three types of activities you and your young child may engage in while at the Museum – active, exploratory and quiet. We have learned that children will select what best fits their current mood and then change activities when they feel satisfied and ready to move on. For some, alternating one kind of activity with another makes the Museum experience better, while for others, choosing what to do and for how long sets the tone and pace of the visit.

We have highlighted below some of the experiences you may want to seek out during your time here. Of course, young children are naturally curious and absorb everything going on around them. So, don’t be surprised if your child is just as intrigued by watching the window washers or climbing the pirate shipramp and stairs as he or she is with the exhibits. Very young children learn continuously, and all these experiences are meaningful.

Active Experiences:

Young children need to move—a lot! When climbing, hopping, jumping, etc., they learn many fundamental concepts: up/down, over/under, to name a few. They figure out what their bodies can do and how to maneuver through their world. By actively exploring objects, manipulating them with their hands and twirling, pounding and turning, children experiment with concepts like weight and volume, shape, height, number and color. They also gain much needed fine motor skills and the ability to track objects visually and coordinate eye and hand movements. At WOW!, very young children have many opportunities to use their brains and bodies, over and over again, to master these skills.

The following exhibits are great for active play:

Gross Motor Skills: Pirate Ship and Lighthouse, Dance Studio, Sand Castle, Water Works, Blowing in the Wind

Fine Motor Skills: Face Painting, Arts & Crafts, Music, Electric Train, Gravity Walls, Building and Train tables

Exploratory Experiences:

Children are natural explorers. Instinctively, they touch, taste, hear and look at whatever is around them. Developing the ability to recognize the similarities and differences in sensory information enables them to begin associating particular sensory characteristics with certain things. Ultimately, this understanding adds order and meaning to many of their experiences. Through fantasy play, children actively explore the different qualities of people in their lives. By role-playing a firefighter or a dancer, the child stretches his or her imagination to gain familiarity with the larger world.

The following exhibits are great for exploratory experiences:

Sensory Experiences: Science Kitchen; Music Room (drums, keyboard, piano), Arts & Crafts (materials in collage and other crafts); Sand Castle, Aquatic Life

Fantasy Play: Theater, Dance Studio, Pirate Ship, Community Life (Grocery Store, Elevations Credit Union, Play House ), Outside Igloo

Quiet Activities:

There are several cozy spaces in the Museum which provide opportunities for quiet, low key play. When children need a break from new and stimulating activities, they often seek familiar, repetitive activities. Reading stories in the reading corner, watching the fish in the aquarium or just sitting under the Pirate Ship are all quiet activities at WOW!

Recommended times to visit WOW with young children:

A Toddler hour on Tuesdays or Wednesdays from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. Tuesdays are our no school group days, so that is a good day in general. Also Saturday summer mornings tend to be the quietest times to visit. We require that groups schedule visits for 15 or more children in advance; so if you call us, we can let you know if a school or play group is scheduled for a day you’d like to come play. During the school year, we do NOT schedule school groups on Tuesdays, in order to provide families with young children a day with a minimal number of older children present.

We offer a number of special programs (play dough, story time, crafts, and music) specifically designed for young children. Pick up our monthly calendar for a current schedule. Members also receive a quarterly newsletter with information about upcoming events. Families with young children can visit the Museum on Tuesdays-Wednesdays from 9-10am for our Toddlers Only (ages 0-5 years) hour.