Upon entering we immediately just started wandering and were a little overwhelmed. At first all the exhibits and activities seemed like they were aimed at an older age group than Ellie. Things were very physics based which were really interesting, except that its a little difficult to explain pulleys and the finer points of aerodynamics to Ellie. But she had fun exploring. And they say that children learn the most just by playing (I read that as experimenting) on their own terms.
Then we went upstairs and saw some more permanent exhibits which were more themed. An exhibit about hockey took up about 1/3 of the upstairs area. There was part of a Zamboni to pretend to drive and get up close with. An exhibit showed how the ice in the arenas is made. There were some uniforms so you can see how heavy they are (both dry and full of sweat...gross). There was also some games where you can either take penalty shots with a virtual goalie or be a goalie and deflect pucks which are shot at you. Ellie didn't want to do either one of those, but enjoyed watching her parents don helmets and try their best. I did not miss my calling of being a hockey goalie by the way.
The museum also had the typical childrens science center stuff...buckets of Legos, dinosaurs, earthquake exhibit (maybe that's just a Cali thing), rock climbing wall, rocket launching (just air rockets, not a water rocket...because we are in a drought) and a couple things that looked like they would be really cool, but it wasn't working. The dinosaur exhibit was pretty cool. There was fossil hunting, and lift size stucco brontosaurus with cut-aways to show the blood circulation system, muscles, stomach, bones, etc.
There was a temporary exhibit about the 50 states. There was something to explore from every state. Some were actually really cool and fun and easy to teach a science lesson to a kid about. The first one and probably the most interactive for parents and kids was the one for Missouri where you built the arch. I can explain a keystone to a 5 year old like its nobodys business. The exhibit for Massachuetts was pretty lame and we were dissapointed...I mean a baseball diamond shaped mini pinball game, not cool enough. I think it was New Hampshire that had some cross-country skiing (in place) and Montana had kayaking. Louisiana had a cool interactive build-a-band and music mixing. I can't remember what Illinois had. Each little mini-exhibit was fun to explore and I'm pretty sure we checked out all 50 of them.
Ellie's favorite exhibit and something we spent a lot of time at was the life-skills, pretend play, kids get to do adult things with child size things. The best part of it was a pretend grocery store where the carts, while real carts, had computers and screens in them. Depending on your age or what level you wanted to play the "game" you got different questions and had to "shop" the different departments to find the items and scan them with your barcode scanner. Of course the questions and tasks had to do with being environmentally friendly (which is more wasteful, buying single serve milk or a gallon? which product is better for recycling the packaging?). Ellie loved it and after doing the 4-6 age group questions (find the donut packaging that holds the most donuts) she did the elementary school level. There was also a game where you had to sort "products" that came by on the conveyor belt by plastic, garbage, green waste, or plastic. She really enjoyed that as well until it got crowded.
So there was nothing there for Cal except for some awesome lights to stare at. He was happy though. He took a couple great naps and was chill for the rest of the time. I think we all had fun and will probably go back, but maybe we will wait till Ellie (and Cal) is a little older. The whole museum seemed to be aimed at the advanced 6-12 age group. And we will probably try and coordinate our next visit on one of the days where if you have a BofA card you can get in for free. Until next time Orange County...
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