Strong Museum of Play

Last year when a friend and her family (2 small girls) visited from Connecticut, the only thing on their 'to do' list was the Strong Museum of Play, and they asked me to join them, but I was busy.  I needed to wait almost a year till more kids visited to have the excuse to go!  Finally, this summer, on a hot day when Charlie's nephew's girlfriend, Sheila, was here with their not-quite-2 year old daughter, Fiona, I decided to take them to the museum, especially to the Dancing Wings Butterfly Garden.  The museum turned out to be such an engaging place for a toddler (Fiona's favorite activities were the Wegmans supermarket - nothing like teaching them young to shop, and to be on the lookout for the Wegmans brand! - and the Post Office, where she could deposit a 'letter' then retrieve it from the back of the box and redeposit it, endlessly) that we barely scratched the surface of the ground floor of the museum, and never made it close to the butterflies.

My college friend Parker, from Baltimore, and her family visited during the recent heat wave, and her daughter, Emory, decided we should go to the Strong Museum to see the butterflies - hurrah!  The exhibit was great, except that it was almost as warm and muggy inside as out.  Beautiful butterflies flew everywhere, and you had to walk carefully to avoid the cute little button quail scurrying on the ground.  There were also tortoises in various enclosures around the garden, and a case where many kinds of chrysalises hung, waiting for their occupants to emerge from their metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly.  The case also displayed a gigantic creepy-looking nocturnal moth from South Asia.  One of the staff had a slightly lame butterfly on her hand (its crinkled wings made it difficult, although not impossible, for it to fly), and Let Emory hold it as well - she said it tickled a bit.

After emerging from the butterfly house, we made our way upstairs, where the more grown-up exhibits are, and what fun!  The first thing we encountered, after making a slinky descend some steps a few times, was Crayon Physics - we were glued to that screen for at least 15 minutes until Emory finally broke the trance and urged us to explore further.  There were banks of arcade games, so Emory played several rounds of Galaga (she was pretty good - really able to focus, and had good eye/hand coordination), and I played one of Asteroids.  I managed to make it into the top 10 scores, despite playing really poorly and pretty much giving up near the end.  Either they must unplug the game periodically, or not many people are nostalgic for Asteroids...  Next, we wandered through the doll  (Barbies, other dolls, doll houses) and the train exhibits, awed by the breadth of the collections, and the ingenious use of space - under many of the glass cases were banks of drawers with more glass cases.  It was overwhelming, and we'd reached our attention span limit, so we headed out, but not without a quick peek into the newly explanded Wegmans (I guess they had to keep pace with the real one on East Avenue?!).  But I'm already plotting my next visit (maybe dragging my sister?), and debating whether it makes sense to just become a member.

To play the addictive crayon physics computer game:
http://crayon-physics.en.softonic.com/ or http://www.crayonphysics.com/

To learn more about the Strong Museum of Play:
http://www.thestrong.org/