During my family’s road trip to San Antonio in early January, we spent a morning at the DoSeum.
I have been enjoying taking my kids to educational and STEAM focused children’s museums during our travels, so I was excited to find that San Antonio has a pretty great one.
It is San Antonio’s museum for kids, and is a STEM based children’s museum. Walking up to the building, I loved their huge Learn, Explore, Create sign. I could tell this would be an awesome way to spend our morning.
The DoSeum is a non-profit organization, with this Mission: “Through joyful learning and discovery, The DoSeum grows minds, connects families, and transforms communities.”
Admission is $14 for everyone aged 1+ (babies under 1 are free). This was much more expensive than Explora, which we previously visited in Albuquerque, however they do participate in the ASTC Passport Program, where you can get free or discounted admission if you have a membership at another museum (see website for details).
Upon entering the DoSeum the Welcome Gallery has a wind turbine for the kids to run in. There are safety goggles to protect their eyes and capes to help them feel like they are flying the wind. My kids loved getting to dress up and play in the wind.
There was also a cool huge kaleidoscope that the kids could sit under and see their image on a screen. The kids sat here for a while watching many angles of themselves on the screen.
There is a staircase next to the kaleidoscope area and my son saw it and went straight upstairs. We started in Powerball Hall. It is just like the name sounds: there were lots, and lots of balls that the kids could play with in many ways to learn about gravity, force, angles, and more.
Our next stop was playing with robots in the Innovation Station. There was a life-sized robot that could copy movements and talk to the kids. This robot scared my daughter, but my son really enjoyed it. He mimicked the robot and the robot mimicked him. We all thought it was silly and cool!
The kids also could use (with our help) computer touch screens to program and move robot cars to dance, drive, and make noise. We had a great time playing with these robots.
My kids are into construction equipment, thanks to the book Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site, so my son was excited for the Cat excavator simulator. However, it was a bit too advanced for his age level and caused him a lot of frustration.
My kids also spent a lot of time building block structures and seeing if they could withstand a fall from about 10 ft, and landing on a pyramid. My son built and sent up cube, after cube, after cube, and all of his cubes were strong enough! He figured out a shape that was sturdy.
Another area we spent a long time in is the Explore area and building a Skyline Theatre city. My kids are very into Legos right now. So stacking the blocks to build the skyscrapers for the city was as fun as it gets for them. They ended up putting together a very cool looking city.
It was fun to see it projected in the shadow (and they were very proud to see their work). While building the city my kids learned that if they moved the buildings closer to the projection light they got larger and further away from the light they got smaller.
Next, we went back downstairs. There was a special exhibit called Dream Tomorrow Today. This was my favorite area. They showed how everyday trash can be recycled in unique ways. I loved this exhibit because I am very into the reduce, reuse and recycle principle and I try to instill this value into my kids too (see my Earth Day STEAM experiments post).
There were several very interesting activities for the kids here too. They had an area where the kids could color in a vehicle or house, scan it, and it would be projected onto a large screen. There also was a huge wall light wall with holes to add colored pegs. My kids liked moving the pegs and making colorful shapes.
Their favorite activity in this exhibit was (surprisingly to me) a sewing activity at the end fo the exhibit. My kids have never tried sewing before, and this was so inspiring to them. My son has been asking me to sew with him ever since then, so I think I will be looking for a similar learn to sew card for him soon. 🙂
Another cool area was the Sensations Studio. My son made an animation using toy animals. He has these same toy animals at home so this was right up his alley. We had to help him a lot to make the animation, but when it was done it was so awesome for all of us to watch.
There was also a very nice quiet reading area. They had a good selection of new children’s books. They happened to have a book I have been wanting to read to my son called, Boys Wear Pink and we enjoyed reading it together in there.
The DoSeum is huge! We spent about 3 hours there and there were several areas we didn’t have time to see. I guess we’ll need to plan another road trip to San Antonio in the future to check out the remaining exhibits, and I don’t think anyone in my family will mind going back. 😉
What is your favorite children’s museum? Have you been to the Doseum before or will you be checking out the DoSeum after reading my review?
