Hands On Children's Museum

 My travel guru is a website called TripAdvisor.com.  I have used the site many, many times to find good, affordable lodging and things to do when I'm in a new town. While in Olympia last week, I looked up "things to do," and found that the #2 rated activity was a visit to the Hands On Children's Museum, right near the capitol building. Since the first ranked activity was walking a boardwalk at a wildlife refuge, and since it was raining, we went for Activity #2.

The Hands On Children's Museum was the perfect place for spending a rainy afternoon with Granddaughter #2.There were a number of rooms with various tactile discovery activities for parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents to enjoy with their little descendants.

As we went started by hanging up our coats, I was amused to see the above sight over the coat hanger rail. This museum knows how to prepare for little kids!

This "sand" was very fine, slightly tacky, and clumped together very nicely.  I would love to have a sandbox with that kind of sand at home. It just feels fun to play with.

In the most complicated gadget corner, you can find just the sort of thing that would intrigue a mechanical engineer and his family. And that's who we were there with, so some quality time was spent figuring it out.

The point is to get these colored balls to go up through the tubes.

Holding the red button down, I believe, is what eventually makes it happen.

Also in that corner are some pipe configurations to be arranged for the balls to go through. You can end up with quite a nice Rube Goldberg setup, if you put it together well.  Fun for everyone!

The museum folk have considerately provided many nice places for kids to rest, or for the old folks to sit for a while as the kids discover and play.

They also provide special exhibits, like this spot to pet the cavies, which are the largest rodent that exists, if I understood the museum personnel correctly.

And there are places to get important work done, like scooping corn kernels into plastic ice cube trays or funnels. They have thought of everything at this museum. There was nothing that would mess up the clothes, and precautions taken (like the deep bin, in this case) to keep from getting little bits all over the floor.

Up at the front of the museum is a children's theater, where everything is make-believe.

What a lovely ticket-seller they had there!

I'm not sure if kids really get the idea that this is a microphone; perhaps the older ones do. The dress-up bin of costumes is chock full of wardrobe options.  And there's a "sound board" with lots of options that allow you to push buttons bringing forth the sound effects of thunder, clapping, etc. We watched a couple of boys of about 10 years of age having a great time onstage, improvising a story as they went.

Over in the science section you can do rubbings of animal etchings and look at big slides under the microscope to observe little tiny things.

And you can climb up in a treehouse and look out at family members waiting outside  Even petite mommies fit in there.

Over in another make-believe section, there's a lot more to be done.  You can "plant" and harvest crops of nutritious plastic vegetables and fruit...

...or go grocery shopping and check out at a little plastic till.

Over in an adjacent area, you can build and oversee a train system on a huge table, or be a medical person or patient in a clinic, or do crafty things. By this time, if you've started on the other side of the museum, you might be getting quite tired...

...at which which point it's time for Daddy to pick up the kid, and the family to gather for a photo.  Note that the ages range from 2 to 85, and a good time was had by all!