It’s no secret that my kids and I love visiting children’s museums. They are educational, and so much fun for the kids that they don’t even realize they are learning while they play.
We have been to several children’s museums around the country when we travel, but surprisingly we hadn’t been to our closest children’s museum until recently.
We live in a suburb of Houston, so it is a bit of a drive (in traffic) to get to the Children’s Museum of Houston. I am intimated by Houston traffic, which probably explains why it took me over a year and a half to finally visit this children’s museum.
We spent an early spring Saturday at the Children’s Museum of Houston. We went as soon as they opened in the morning (at 10am), to beat the crowds. This children’s museum is huge, popular, and can get very busy on the weekends. We were early enough to get close metered parking and there was just a short line to buy tickets.
As we walked up to the building we were greeted by huge statues of children. I saw other kids and parents admiring the statues and taking pictures, so took our obligatory pictures with the statues too. My son was excited that one had his same name!
The Children’s Museum of Houston touts itself as “America’s No 1 Children’s Museum” on its website. Reading their claim set my expectations pretty high before we visited.
We have visited children’s museums in Albuquerque, San Antonio, The Woodlands, and Phoenix (the last two I will share about in future posts), so we have seen a variety of excellent children’s museums.
The Children’s Museum of Houston costs $12 per person ages 1+ (children under 1 are free). This is similar pricing to most other children’s museums we have visited. This museum is an ASTC Travel Passport Program Member, so you can use this membership to get into other participating museums free (and vise versa).
The Children’s Museum of Houston features many of the same type of exhibits we have seen at previous children’s museums, such as examples of Bernoulli’s Principle, vacuum, force, and mass experiments. But each of their experiments and activities were done in unique and interesting ways compared to what we have seen previously.
There were also a lot of unique exhibits that set the Children’s Museum of Houston apart from other museums we’ve visited.
We loved the electrical activities too!
The Matter Factory was an area where kids can explore molecules and atoms and learn about elements. My kids loved selecting the elements to analyze and their chemistry loving mom was beaming from ear to ear. 😉
FlowWorks was an outdoor play area (providing a great way to cool off in the summer) and also a fun way to learn about water flow through pipes, weather, waves, and more. We didn’t have extra clothes and it was a cool day, so I purposely steered my kids away from the wet play areas. 😉
And last, but not least, was one of our favorite areas: Kidtropolis – a kids metropolis with its own city government and occupations. My kids especially loved the veterinary clinic, the grocery store, and restaurant. There was also a forensic science lab, TV station, political election, bank, police, fire station, ambulance, and more. I think we could spend an entire visit just in the Kidtropolis area. It was a pretty spectacular exhibit.
We had so much fun at the Children’s Museum of Houston we decided to buy a membership as we were leaving!
I can’t wait for all our upcoming visits this summer when it is too hot for many outdoor activities with the kids.
Have you ever been to the Children’s Museum of Houston? How does it compare to other children’s museums you’ve been too? Which children’s museum is your favorite?
