The Exploration Place

The second day of our trip to Wichita, KS was a visit to the Exploration Place. It is a hands on museum and was the perfect place to spend a cold and drizzly day. I checked ahead of time and knew the local children were in school so we practically had the place to ourselves. So we absolutely got our $20 worth on this visit as we stayed for 6 1/2 hours!

The first area we went to was a huge castle environment. It was three stories tall and had several rooms that visitors could explore. We spent quite a bit of time here and the kids just loved to play and use their imagination.

I really liked the garden concept here.

Eric spent a lot of time riding the horses.

Onto the next exhibit and the girls were in for a surprise when they tried to look at themselves in the mirror. The tunnel spun and we all got quite a laugh!

Here they are making stars.

Letting Eric "drive" the truck.

Mr. Potato Heads - more accessories than you could ever imagine.

One of Eric's favorite places, little plastic pieces of dirt and they had to find the hidden bones. I imagine that there used to be quite a bit of "dirt" but is was pretty barren while we were there. However, Eric loved it and I ended taking him away over my shoulder much to his dismay.

The next exhibit was music from around the world. It was really interesting and fun but Eric managed to get a nice lump on his forehead. After an ice pack, an incident report and a Mr. Potato Head Cookie, all was well and we were back to exploring.

The girls enjoyed the break at the cafe and part of the Mr. Potato Head Cookie.

They each had to take a picture of themselves and they made sure I posted it on here.

Now back to playing. Our next stop was a pretend veterinary office and they played here for 45 minutes. We only left because some other children came and we had more to explore.

Our next stop was an exhibit on Kansas including this smoking tornado display.

Then the girls got into the tornado tunnel...

where the wind speed got up to 78 mph

One of Emma's favorite things to do was to play with the "colored sand". It was colored fish tank rocks that they could use to manipulate the water flow and watch the effects. Very cool.

More water manipulation

After lunch we checked out the pendulum and waited for it to knock down one of the blocks.

And then we went through the museum again. We had the time and the children really did enjoy playing. Back to the castle and this time they found the dress up clothes.

There was an area for 3 and under that we didn't go into the first time around. Again, there was hardly anyone there so we all went in to play. Eric was happy to find this Thomas train table!

The girls found a cute kitchen with a crib large and strong enough to hold Emma.

We spent our last hour here, then got in the van and drove the two hours back to Manhattan.