Hi Knitters,
Last week my sister and I took some of our kids to the new Madison Children's Museum which is located downtown and right off the square. I forgot my camera so these photos were taken with my phone so the quality isn't great. We had been to the old location of the Children's Museum a long time ago but the new building is so much better. I am glad we got to see it.
I loved looking at all of the creative and decorative pieces around the museum. This is a curved bench with book spines as the back rest. Clever!
There were lots of extras sprinkled throughout the museum like this set of old hairdryers. My favorite was when three boys sat in the seats and pulled the dryers down over their heads and chatted away like a bunch of ladies at the salon.
There are interesting climbing structures and a suspended gigantic hamster wheel that the kids can go in and run so it turns. My nephew tried the hamster wheel. TC and her cousin climbed to the top of this structure.
The museum has a lot of making or craft areas. There was a weaving area with bits and pieces of string to make a cooperative woven piece of art that is then left as a display. TC and Peachy worked on this for a bit.
Here is one of the finished weavings that turned out well. There was also a shadow room where you stand on a wall and pose (we all crammed into the room at the same time) and a flash lights up the room. When you step away from the wall your image is left on the wall. That was fun.
Throughout the building there were artistic touches like these mosaic columns. TC's class at school made a bunch of these bottle caps that were then used in the mosaics. She loved seeing them. I love the way the museum used community-made art. By the way, the old fridges were sealed closed for safety. This hallway led to a big kitchen area.
I love the way they used the different color grout.
The little artistic touches and lots of details made for interesting things to look at everywhere you turned.
This art station had baskets with items found in nature like pine cones, leaves and twigs. They had glue dots to put your design together. We tried this for awhile but it was pretty picked over. Cute idea though! There was another art area with various paper materials to create, too. There was a painting room with traditional paints and paper ready to go but we didn't go in that one.
Right next to this creative nature counter there was a huge window with buckets of paint in front of it. You could just dip right in and paint on the window. I painted some big flowers and TC painted some little flowers.
My nephew loves to build things so he made this huge tower. First he built himself inside without a way to get out so he had to redesign with the lower section so he had an escape route. There is also a Lego room that looked like fun but there was group meeting in there so we didn't go in.
After the museum we all went out for an early dinner at The Old Fashioned which is directly on the capitol square. I recommend this restaurant. It is a good one to take the whole family and it has a great view of the gorgeous capitol square and building right out the windows. It is usually super crowded but since it was early we got right in.
It was a fun excursion and I thought you might enjoy it, too!
best, susie