Arizona Adventures: Week 6: Children's Museum of Phoenix

The Children's Museum of Phoenix's mission is to engage the minds, muscles and imaginations of children and the grown-ups who care about them. The Children's Museum has been in its current location at the old Monroe School building since 2008, but was actually originally founded in 1998 as the Phoenix Family Museum by a small group of volunteers. From 1998 until 2008 the Phoenix Family Museum visited community events and schools all over the valley and engaged the imaginations of over 275, 000 participants through a program called Museums Without Walls (MWW).

The Museum has been in its current permanent location at 7th Street and Van Buren Street in downtown phoenix for six years and continues to add new exhibits all the time. Just this past February, they opened an outdoor exhibit partially sponsored by the Arizona Diamondbacks. It has some pretty amazing play spaces including a super long climbing tube and a cactus maze. Musical instruments dot the lawn, and the outdoor visuals are so inviting it's hard to walk by without wanting to go inside and see what else is there is to play with. They also added a super cool hot dog stand to go along with the ice cream stand inside on the third floor just outside the noodle forest.

outside play area completed February 2014

The website is pretty good, and explains in detail all of the things the museum offers, but honestly I wasn't really sold until we had been inside. Sometimes we visit museums as a family, and it's made up of things that grown-ups think will be fun for kids, but actually aren't very fun for kids. Thirty minute long videos, even about things that are fun, aren't very fun for kids. This museum is the opposite of that. Everything you wish they would have they do.

A whole room devoted to building forts out of couch cushions? Check.

A giant room that consists of rolling balls down super long ramps? Check

Car tracks to race cars down? Check

A place to paint and color and craft? Check

Lots of grown-ups (ahem, playologists, as the museum likes to call them) around to tell you you're doing a great job and to play with you? Check

Chompy in her fort

Also, this place is super eco-friendly. If they can recycle it, they do, and there is some pretty amazing art in this building made out of old silverware, milk cartons, guitars, plastic bags and anything else you can think of. We have been there once a week since we moved to Phoenix, and we find a new favorite thing every time we go.

ceiling decorated with umbrellas

Only a few complaints, sometimes it gets super busy with school groups. Parents can check before they go and see how many groups are expected on the web site, though. Some parents complain there's not enough to do for older kids, and I could see that as a problem eventually. The memberships are a little confusing. I'm still not sure exactly how ours works, and we've belonged for almost a year. I'm going to get a better explanation this year when I renew.

Washers with giant bolts. This actually makes for a pretty cool visual and audio effect.

Chompy is two, and there's plenty she can't do yet. Stinko is only months and he's really getting into the baby areas. Whoa, did I mention that in every space there's something for the older kids to do, there's a safe soft place to put your baby down to crawl around. Yep, they thought of everything. This is the place I go to on hot days where I can take a break and sit down and let the kids play. It's the ultimate indoor playground, with an extra bonus in that I don't have to chase Stinko around and make sure he's not eating cigarette butts.