The Children’s Museum, Utica, NY

Where do I begin? The Children’s Museum in Utica has over 24,000 square feet of exploration space. It took us three hours to get through the entire building, and I don’t think we even saw everything. Admission is pricey ($9.00 for anyone over the age of 1 year) and this has been the main reason why we haven’t visited in nine years. But the children get their own allowances and they wanted to go, so we split the admission prices 50/50. Great deal, I’d say!

The Children’s Museum is right next to historic Bagg’s Square, of which I wrote here. The Children’s Museum is a testament to the ingenuity of moms. It was a group of women– the Junior League– in 1963 who started out with a lifesize model of an Iroquois longhouse in a library basement, and expanded the project into four stories of displays for children of all ages. This place has EVERYTHING, except maybe Audemars Piguet offshore chronographs, but then like I said, we didn’t see everything. I snapped almost 100 photos, and that was after whittling my choices down. I obviously cannot post all my photos here. If you’d like to see some really cool stuff, check out my Flickr page.

The kids had an absolute blast. My kids are older (youngest is 11) and we still had a blast. There is a cute playroom for toddlers, but everything else is geared for kids ages 5 to 100.

Shall I possibly list off everything we saw? No way! How about everything we saw that interested us? No way! How about the top fifty? Wow… my blog posts can only be so long, you know! The place is filled with old stuff. And it’s all stuff you can touch and experiment with.

Here’s Injane checking out an old telephone operator board. One ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy…

Here’s a cool see-through car that you can explore. Has a crash dummy, too.

I, of course, loved the architecture of the building. It used to be an old dry goods store. Can you imagine?! A dry goods store– with an oak staircase, transom windows, tin ceilings, oak flooring, federal-style loft windows?! My house isn’t even built this nicely.

We loved the Iroquois longhouse. History oozed from everything.

I love the replica Hiawatha wampum belt. Looks just like the real thing.

There were several pianos and musical instruments in the museum. Several uprights, and some baby grands, an old organ, and assorted xylophones. What blast!

The place also had toys, clothing, dioramas, reptiles, bugs, life-sized displays to play make-believe, a stage with assorted pianos (all out of tune), Legos, displays of community events (like a kayaking group, and the Ride for Missing Children’s Group), puppets, fossils, everything!

I really liked the radio station display. I worked in radio for several years, and seeing this brought back such memories!

I will add that it is rather disconcerting to see equipment that I used in my younger years labeled as “nostalgic.” :S

As seems to happen wherever we go, a photographer from the local newspaper shows up on the day as we do. For some reason, my kids usually have their pictures taken by photographers. They’ve been in the newspaper a few times now. I took a photo of the photographer photographing my kids.

The kids didn’t make it in the papers this time around.

Here’s a photo of a pacu, a fish native to the Amazon river. He’s a big one.

They also had a big turtle, a gerbil, and a tarantula! Several years back, there was a clear plastic display filled with honeybees making honeycomb, but the bees are gone. I saw a sticker that said there was a mite infestation (which I’d been hearing is responsible for our honeybees dying off), so I guess the bees were removed. Too bad; that was one of my favorite exhibits.

Last time we visited, the fourth floor was undeveloped. It was a treat to see new exhibits. They have a small (genuine) airplane the kids can hop in and work the controls.

There’s also the world-renowned Hot Wheels collection. The toys went way back to- what?- the 50s? Quite a big collection.

There is just too much to mention, really. The nice thing about this Children’s Museum is that it is a little beat up. It’s old and creaky and some of the stuff is obviously very worn. But that’s part of its charm. You can handle and play with things and not worry about breaking them. You can relax and not have to watch your p’s and q’s that you might drop something. It’s truly a kids’ place.

Outside, there’s a small park around Bagg’s Tavern, and a few train cars to explore. The trains were locked up, so we couldn’t go inside, but we could peer through the windows. And the kids had no problem having fun on the train decks.

What started out as an after-school project by community moms and the Oneida Indians has grown to become a wonderful glimpse into our community’s past. I don’t think we’ll ever be too old not to visit the Children’s Museum!

Nicolaus Copernicus Monument in Utica, NY

It was a warm, sunny afternoon in Utica, NY. As we strolled to our destination, we passed by this monument on Genesee Street. It’s of Mikolaj Kopernik, known to Americans as Nicolaus Copernicus, great astronomer.

Utica has had a very large Polish population, when large numbers of Poles emigrated to the United States during the late 1800s and early 1900s. This monument honors their most famous brother. Copernicus is buried in Poland (he died in 1543).

The MOST, Syracuse, Part 3

The MOST– the Museum of Science and Technology in Syracuse, NY, is a big place. We spent the better part of 3 hours exploring everything. Downstairs, the museum has a play area for little kids, and cave-looking rooms with loads of displays and interactive stuff. You can read about our visits in Part 1, Part 2, and a big post about the amazing Toothpick City II.

I loved the coral reef in the fish tank. Wow!

A lot of the displays in the cave halls had to do with the local geology of Syracuse, which is situated in a briny, swampy area of central New York. Syracuse once supplied the nation with much of its salt, up until 1926 when the industry waned. There was a ton of science, geology, and history to absorb. It was a lot of information! Some were a little overwhelmed.

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The MOST, Syracuse, NY: Part 2

You can read Part 1 of our visit here, and about the marvelous Toothpick City II display, here. We spent about 3 hours, exploring everything we could at the museum– it was a blast!

Hands down, the best part was this– a “green room” display that had a TV with a basletball player. You could walk onto the platform in the green area, and appear on the creen with the basketball player! It was SO COOL!! This must be how the modern Star Wars movies are filmed, with live action before a green screen and the animated critters on a TV or something. I just loved this thing!

The kids seemed to really enjoy the Van de Graff generator and other gadgets like it. I think they perhaps enjoyed it a bit TOO much.

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Museum of Science & Technology, Syracuse

We visited the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technology (MOST) in Syracuse last week. Usually the museum is closed on Mondays, but due to the Easter vacation, they’d opened their doors. The building is situated at the Armory in Syracuse, a traffic-heavy circle in the heart of downtown. It took some navigating to get there. Parking was nowhere to be found (and it was 75 cents per hour, for a limit of two hours). So I parked in a parking lot across from the Erie Canal Museum that we’d visited last year, and we walked to the MOST (a brisk 15 minute walk).

The museum has a very nice planetarium that we’d seen before, years ago. Because of time constraints, I opted to go for just the museum visit. After paying the admission (which was reasonable), we wandered into the main part of the building. To our amazement, we saw a huge platform with oddly-shaped structures on it. Upon closer inspection, we saw that this was the famous Toothpick City II display, ongoing before our eyes! When it’s completed, it will be the largest toothpick structure in the world with almost 4 million toothpicks used when completed! The creator, Stan Munro, was there working on a new creation.

I have already written a post, loaded with photos, about Toothpick City II and Stan’s story. It’s just amazing! And you must go to Stan’s website to see his gallery of other structures. I can’t believe it’s all in toothpicks!

After we oo’ed and ahh’ed for half an hour there, we decided to pull ourselves away and explore the rest of the museum. It’s a HUGE museum, and we were there for 3 hours! The MOST is a science museum, with science-oriented displays and tools to explore and learn more about our world. There is too much there to cover all the bases here– I’ll simply detail some of our favorites, spreading it out into two or three posts.

We enjoyed playing with some lights displays. There’s one on ultraviolet light that we liked. Reminded me so much of the 1980s!

A display showing how monochrome light works was fun.

A human brain. Ick. Wonder who donated it? Someone from the NY legislature?

Ooo and this was cool– surround yourself with a big bubble! None of the kids were very enthusiastic about trying it, but when I begged, they gave in. Making a big bubble is much harder than it looks.

We got everyone involved. Read more

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