What are some popular museums my family should visit while on vacation?
There's the Exploratorium in San Francisco; the Museum of Natural History here in New York, and the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia, which is the only museum in the country that was designed for kids under the age of 6. The Exporatorium is probably the country's first science museum, but everything that you can touch, it's an incredible, incredible space. In fact, science museums in general are great because children and adults learn side by side. Very often, our kids even know more than we do. There are just so many incredible museums, they're not the dry-as-dust museums that we might remember that we went on our class trips on. They are different; they've changed. They've changed with the times, they've changed with the curators becoming parents. The Getty, which is definitely one of the world class museums that's absolutely astounding, have a childrens playroom. You go into the room, and can try on different era dresses and things that are actually found in some of the paintings or items that are there. They also have a treasure hunt kit available in Spanish and in English. You take this little lunch - it looks like a lunch box, and it has little cards in it. It reads Did you find this painting?, and it'll be a picture of a painting of a boy and a dog and will say What is the dog doing? Why do you think the dog is important in the picture? It will get you to start thinking about the painting. And not just the child - it gets the parents thinking about the painting again. It makes you interact with your child in a situation where they could just say I don't want to do this any more, let's leave.
