Family Outings / Fun Places to Visit: Children's Museum of Southeastern Connecticut

Children's museum...why would you take your child to a place filled with art and breakable items?! Behold, children's museum are hidden treasures filled with fun things to do, crafts to make, activities to enjoy, and great toys to play with! At the Children's Museum of Southeastern Connecticut, located along the shoreline on Main Street in Niantic, CT, your child can:

• Pretend he is shopping for various types of seafood at the Seaside Village Market
• Become the captain of a large boat
• Dig for treasures in the sand
• Cook a great Mexican feast
• Stir up some great Chinese cuisine
• Find various meanings to Hieroglyphics in Egyptian pyramids
• Play music with their body movements
• Learn colors, shapes, and how bees create honey
• Play an organ
• See themselves a thousand times in the kaleidoscope mirror
• SO MUCH MORE!!!

At the Children's Museum, your child can select a book filled with fun closeups of various items throughout the museum and have fun finding each one. He or she can go outside and enter a real submarine or play on a great outdoor playscape complete with music, bubbles, and sand to dig in! He or she can learn cause and effect, how to make music that brings smiles to faces of surrounding children, build block structures, or take a trip to foreign countries without boarding a plane!

Picture opportunities are unlimited as your child ventures through the museum from location to location, smiling wide and exploring the many exhibits! With a slogan such as "Where discoveries are made and fun just happens", how can one not enjoy their time at the museum?! Pose your child in the boat, restaurant, or in the tree house. Catch random pictures of them running through the traffic lights or pulling the fire alarm and running to get the hose from the hydrant! Let them show off their fishing skills or how well they know what is magnetic and what is note. Learning and fun exist simultaneously in this wondrous place.

As a parent, there are plenty of comfortable places to sit if you do not want to join in the fun. However, should you want to savor the moments together, you can jump on it and have fun playing alongside the children. Admission is reasonable, at $7 per person, and includes all the fun you can have for a full day! Those wishing to buy a membership can choose between a $75 membership for a family or $100 ACM that allows you entry into Children's Museums across the nation!

The museum store includes hand made gifts and free-trade gifts from Brazil and other countries. Some our favorite gifts were Tegu blocks, books from local authors, and an animal game from Brazil where you have to stack a bunch of animal shaped blocks on top of one another without letting any fall! You can find a fun, creative gift for anyone in the family within this quaint store in the front of the Museum.

When you are done with your trip, you can take the family for a stroll along the shoreline to Gumdrops and Lollipops, The Book Barn, or one of the many restaurants and cafes along Main Street. Enjoy a walk along the boardwalk (under construction at time of this writing) or McCook beach. Enjoy the scenic view as you stroll from the Hole in the Wall through to McCook Park. The options are endless when you have a day free to enjoy the wonderful weather in Southeastern Connecticut!

Check out The Children's Museum of Southeastern Connecticut website for more pictures, information, and directions! If you have been there before or visit, please leave feedback about your experience by posting a comment and telling others what you thought!