Rockford Discovery Center Museum

On Sunday we went to the Rockford Discovery Center Museum. We've been meaning to go check it out and finally found the opportunity to pack up the kids and a picnic lunch and head west. Right when you walk in, there is a pretty large exhibit for UPS where kids can load packages onto a wooden airplane. Sounds pretty lame to me, but both boys just loved it, although neither one would put on the brown shirt.


We practically had to drag the kids away to see what else the museum had to offer. There was a neat gigantic bubble maker. You just had to stand still on a platform and pull on a rope connected to a hula hoop sitting in bubble solution. As you might guess, I had to take several pictures to get one with Jason before he popped the bubble but here he is completely enveloped.

The air cannon was a HUGE hit. Taking up one giant wall was this mass of tubing through which some high-pressure air was flowing. There was a little house where you could put balls of various weights (like nerf balls) and they would zip along through all the tubes and then shoot out an opening. The kids could shut off parts of the cannon and redirect the air flow and where the balls would come out.

Jason inspects a rather large climbable triangle.

Outside was the coolest playground structure ever. It was HUGE, multi-level, and had loads of stuff to do. Here is one of the sandbox areas that had some digging tools and brushes, and lo and behold, the kids unearthed a dinosaur! Amazing.

We spent at least an hour and a half outside on the playground and even ate our picnic out there. I was expecting to spend maybe a couple hours at the museum, but we actually were there from opening at noon to close at five pm. What a blast!