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The Early Start Discovery Centre: Australia’s First Children’s Museum

March 6, 2016 / Indoor Play, Museums, Sydney, Sydney Life / 2 Comments

Australia’s first children’s museum has opened in Australia! The Early Start Discovery Space in Wollongong is the country’s only dedicated “Children’s Museum”. Last weekend we drove the hour and a half south of Sydney to check it out and see what made it different from a regular play space.

The Early Start Discovery Space is located on, and operated by, the University of Wollongong. It was designed to teach children through play using interactive exhibits. It was created using educational resources and is mapped to the NSW Board of Studies K-6 Syllabus. The museum is suitable for kids from birth to age 12, with the lower level completely accessible and some of the best family bathrooms I’ve ever seen.

We visited on a bit of a dreary day and expected the place to be crawling with people. It wasn’t. We were happy surprised that while there was a constant buzz of people in the space, it was certainly not full or so busy that Cheese couldn’t try her hand at every single exhibit without having to wait her turn. I ran into a friend there who mentioned how busy it was that day, compared to during the week, so I imagine if you do visit on a week day you might have this entire magnificent space to yourself!

The museum is spread across two floors, with each exhibit in a designated area. Upon entry we received a very helpful map which enabled us to plan our visit.

The majority of the exhibits are on the entry level:

Shipyard
Ahoy, it’s pirate play!

Tummy Tour
Crawl through a human digestive tract! In through the mouth, out through the … you get the picture.

Construction Site
Learn about safety on building sites, dress up in a vest, hard hat and tool belt, and build the city. Kids can lay carpet tiles, place mortar and bricks in the house to build walls, or thread pipes and connectors into the frame.

Market Place
Littlies will love “shopping” with realistic-looking groceries, and older kids can use a shopping list to collect their goods and then “buy” them.

CreARTivity Space
The place for artists to let their imaginations go wild. This space also features daily educator-led activities.

Book Nook
A quiet spot to enjoy a book or join story time activities.

The Cave
Grab a torch and discover stalactites and stalagmites.

Lights, Sound, Action!
Kids can dress up in costume and perform.

Games Area
Big kid games like chess and giant Connect Four.

Crawler’s Cubby
Soft play for babies plus gears for toddlers/preschoolers.

The Pod
A 2 story interactive LCD screen where kids can be part of the story on the screen in front of them.

The Dig/Archeology was closed for maintenance on our visit.

Also scattered around the floor are little nooks with activities like building, threading and puppets.

The floor is a giant circle with the exhibits and amenities spread around the inside and outside edges of the circle. It’s fantastic as kids can literally run in circles here and find it endlessly entertaining to start over at the exhibits they already discovered as they entered. Hours of fun, guaranteed.

Upstairs are activities best suited for slightly older kids.

Digital Media Lab
Kids can learn how to create an eBook, an ePoster, video and editing

Galileo’s Study
This science-themed area teaches kids how a telescope works and basic astronomy.

When it’s time for a snack, head outside to The Discovery Gardens. There are shaded picnic tables so you can bring your own food, and take a breather while kids explore the fruit and veggie beds, quarry and creek.

If you’re like us and never pack lunch (busted!) try the onsite cafe, Espresso Warriors, where all-day brekkie is on the menu, as well as amazing looking pastries and a kids menu that features meals like ham and cheese toasties, fish, sweet potato chips and grilled chicken for $10-11. Each kids meal comes with fresh fruit and a juice box.

The Early Start Discovery Space
University of Wollongong, Northfields Ave, Wollongong.
The Discovery Space is located on Ring Road opposite the Western (P4) Car park.
Hours: Tues-Sun 9am-4pm (Closed Mondays)
Prices: Adults and children 12 months and over: $15. Children under 12 months: free.
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The Best of San Francisco For Kids: Children’s Creativity Museum

December 27, 2015 / California, Cheese, San Francisco, USA / 0 comment

Children’s Creativity Museum is a hands-on, multimedia arts and technology museum for kids of all ages. It’s the kind of place that kids never want to leave as it’s full of open ended play opportunities that will literally keep them occupied for the entire day. The biggest challenge you’ll have is removing the kids to grab lunch when you’re desperate for a snack yourself.

The museum is broken up into several different levels and labs. Some of the areas, such as the Animation Studio, were best suited to older kids than our preschoolers, but we were still able to find more than enough to entertain two three year olds for an entire day.

Animation Studio
Geared towards older kids, children will learn the basics of stop motion animation by creating their own clay characters and bringing them to life on screen.
Community Lab
Until Jan 3 the Community Lab will feature Brain Teasers 2, an interactive exhibit featuring 21 hands-on puzzles.
Imagination Lab
The area where we spent the majority of our time at the museum, the Imagination Lab is a hands-on environment encouraging building and creating with materials like blocks, Magna Tiles and craft. The dress up and puppet theatre was particularly popular with the preschoolers.
Innovation Lab
Kids are given the Mystery Box Challenge – a box filled with materials and a brief to create an object using only those materials. It was a lot of fun for the kids to think about basic design concepts as well as letting their creativity reign.

Music Studio
The girls’ favourite part of museum, no surprise. Pick a song from a selection of over 2,000 to sing in front of a green screen. The girls chose “Let It Go” (no surprises there) and sang it against an icy background reminiscent of Arendelle. They were in heaven.
Tech Lab
A fun way to introduce kids to coding. A bit too old for our kids, I’d love to return another time to try this lab.

Before leaving the museum, take a spin on the hand-carved wooden carousel out the front. It’s the oldest operating carousel in San Francisco with a whimsical menagerie of animals to ride on. Be warned, it’s extremely fast!

Children’s Creativity Museum
221 Fourth St. San Francisco, CA
Price: General admission $12. Kids under 2 free.

Looking for more things to do in San Francisco? Try one of these San Francisco tours.

Grinches and Goat Cheese Tarts: Children's Museum of Manhattan + Cafe Lalo, Kid-Friendly New York

December 3, 2013 / Cheese, New York Food / 1 Comment

We often repeated this dually awesome combination of play for kids and great food for everyone during super hot summer days. Now it’s the opposite problem. Hail, sleet, cold rain, and snow! Visiting the Children’s Museum of Manhattan and Cafe Lalo is still one of our best indoor bets, with some pleasant updates.

Cafe Lalo does desserts extremely well. It’s what they’re famous for, and the reason we usually visit. Our go-to item in the summer is the Lalo Special (frozen yogurt and berries, $11.50). Now that the weather has cooled waaaaay down, we’ve branched into the more savory items on their menu. One of the really fun things about Cafe Lalo is that they feature dishes from all over the world. This visit, we tried the Baked Salmon Salad ($14), Fresh Mixed Seasonal Berries ($7), Goat Cheese Quiche (served with Mediterranean Salad, $11), and the French Fries ($7). The dishes were solid. Not extraordinary but really good, warming dishes, perfect for lunch before playing with a toddler. The quiche had big chunks of tart goat’s cheese, with a flaky crust. The salad had great seasoning and super-juicy tomatoes. Cheese picked at the French fries and berries — both of which were absolutely delicious, by the way. Ripe berries, even though it was off-season.

I have to say, the desserts are still the winning dishes at Cafe Lalo — we dropped by again after playing at the Children’s Museum and took home some cheesecake. Hey, we had a big workout, okay?

We covered the Children’s Museum of Manhattan (CMoM) pretty thoroughly in our previous post. The CMoM has a new exhibition open for the holiday season that’s worth checking out — The Grinch’s Holiday Workshop. This exhibit is suitable for all ages, and runs through till December 31, 2013. Inspired by Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, kids can step straight into the pages of this Seussian classic holiday tale. The walls of the room are wrapped in scenes from How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, which is fun to see for adults and kids alike, who have grown up loving Dr Seuss.

In The Grinch’s Holiday Workshop, kids can try “sock skating” on the indoor rink (including playing games of “freeze” with CMOM staffers); pretend to steer Max, the Grinch’s “Rein-Dog” on an interactive sleigh; make Dr Seuss-themed crafts and join in on story time to hear How the Grinch Stole Christmas! and other classic books by Dr. Seuss. Check out the CMOM calendar for daily events.

The most fun for us was the “sock skating”, which was really more like slippery dancing. CMOM staffers make sure that not too many kids get on the “ice” at a time, so it’s a safe activity for the smallest of toddlers.

High Chairs: No
Stroller storage: You can’t bring your stroller inside, but they’ll store it for you somewhere mysterious under the restaurant.
Easy access: No. Quite a few steps.
Change tables: No. The bathrooms are pretty small.
Kids’ menu: No, but there’s so much to choose from, from bagels and muffins to steamed eggs or homemade waffles.

Cafe Lalo
201 West 83rd St. (between Amsterdam Ave. & Broadway)
Upper West Side, New York
Phone: (212) 496-6031
Prices: $$
Hours: Mon-Thur 8am-2am; Fri 8am-4am; Sat 9am-4am Sun 9am-2am. Holidays until 4am.

Children’s Museum of Manhattan
212 W. 83rd St (between Amsterdam Ave. & Broadway)
New York, NY 10024
Phone: (212) 721-1234
Hours: Sun-Fri 10am-5pm; Sat 10am-7pm. Closed Mondays.

Children's Museum of Manhattan + Cafe Lalo: Kid-Friendly Activities, UWS, NY

August 15, 2013 / Cheese, Eat & Explore, Manhattan Munchies, Museums & Galleries, New York Food, Upper West Side / 2 Comments

On a stupidly hot day, we were dying for an indoor space with super strong air-conditioning, where Cheese could also run around. We caught the A/C train straight up to 81st street to check out the Children’s Museum of Manhattan (CMOM).

The CMOM is a five-story paradise for kids. Each floor contains either permanent or special exhibits, which are highly interactive, and suitable for children of all ages— from birth on up. Cheese, at 22 months, particularly loved the “PlayWorks” exhibit, featuring a fire truck, MTA bus and a giant talking dragon who “eats” letters.

Children's Museum of Manhattan - via brunchwithmybaby.com — Riding atop the letter-eating dragon.

Other exhibits of note included an outdoor water play area in summer, a mural wall for kids to play on, a sand pit, a soft play area for babies and a Dora The Explorer rainforest world (with a jungle canopy and play exotic animal exhibits for kids to discover).

We went on the 4th of July holiday and it was not overly busy, which you’d expect on a public holiday (maybe everyone was out barbecuing?). You’ll need to check your stroller at the entrance, so bring a carrier for kids who aren’t strong walkers. Also, there are easy-to-access bathrooms with change tables available.

After working up an appetite we ducked into Cafe Lalo across the street (which is worth a visit on its own any day!) for a snack.

Cafe Lalo - kid-friendly cafes, NY, via brunchwithmybaby.com — “Lalo’s Special”: frozen yogurt with fresh berries and an apple turnover.

Since it was so hot, we each ordered the “Lalo’s Special” ($11.50). It’s a bowl of frozen yogurt with your choice of berries, fruit or nuts, and a fresh-baked breakfast pastry of your choice. We both ordered ours with the berries and went with an apple danish and cranberry scone since they were only two remaining pastries. As always, the yogurt was perfect, with the fresh mixed berries giving sweet zings of flavour to the tart yogurt. While the pastries weren’t our first choices (I’d usually go for a pain au chocolat, and Alec a plain crossant), they were delicious. The apple danish was flaky with big chunks of apple, and the cranberry scone was densely packed with sweet bursts of cranberry.

We let Cheese share our dishes—she loved the yogurt and berries most of all.

Cafe Lalo is actually known for two things—desserts (they have over 100 whole cakes, pies and tarts available), and for a famous scene in the movie “You’ve Got Mail“, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. As such, it’s always packed, either with lovers of sweets like myself, or busloads of tourists—who showed up at just the same time we did that day. The tourists mostly stayed in the front of the cafe to order a dessert to go, so it wasn’t as obtrusive as you’d expect.

The interior—with its walls covered in Toulouse Lautrec-esque prints—is charmingly Parisian. If you block out the decidedly non-European voices around you, it’s easy to imagine you’re in a cafe in Paris.

Taking children to Cafe Lalo is a mixed bag. They’re not especially set up for kids, so come prepared for your visit —you’ll need to leave the stroller outside, and be sure to speak up and ask for anything you need for your child.

Last bite: Drop by for a snack or dessert for a touch of Paris on the UWS. Kids are welcome—order them a pastry or share a “Lalo’s Special” for a fun afternoon (or morning) treat.

Stroller storage: You can’t bring your stroller inside, but they’ll store it for you somewhere mysterious under the restaurant.
Easy access: No. Quite a few steps.
Change tables: No. The bathrooms are pretty small.
Kids’ menu: No, but there’s so much to choose from, from bagels and muffins to steamed eggs or homemade waffles.

Cafe Lalo
201 West 83rd St. (between Amsterdam Ave. & Broadway)
New York, NY 10024
Phone: (212) 496-6031
Prices: $$
Hours: Mon-Thur 8am-2am; Fri 8am-4am; Sat 9am-4am Sun 9am-2am. Holidays until 4am.

Children’s Museum of Manhattan
212 W. 83rd St (between Amsterdam Ave. & Broadway)
New York, NY 10024
Phone: (212) 721-1234
Hours: Sun-Fri 10am-5pm; Sat 10am-7pm. Closed Mondays.