A while back I won a family 4 pass to Explore & More Children’s Museum at a basket raffle and we were saving it for a rainy day. Well that day came and we decided we needed to get out of the house and run these kids around! We packed the kids up and drove out to East Aurora, NY (same town the Fisher Price studio is located).
First some basics about the Museum. It opened about 21 years ago with the idea of creating a space for kids in WNY to have high quality play based learning experiences. It has since expanded and is now working on opening a brand-new location downtown in Buffalo, NY’s new and upcoming Canalside area. If you would like to donate to help make this dream come true for even more kids then you can here. They also host Canalside Friday’s where kids can come play outside downtown with some of their fun toys.
They are open Wednesday through Saturday 10a – 5pm and Sundays 12p-5pm. Every first Friday of the month they are open 10am-8pm. The admission cost is $7 for those aged 1y and up. Kids under 1y are Free. They also have free admission for families with WIC, SNAP, or Arts Access. They also have Family Memberships for $60. I am actually thinking about asking for this as a gift for Christmas if somebody asks.
We already have memberships to the Buffalo Science Museum and the Buffalo Zoo. The Zoo membership is from my aunt & uncle as a gift (you can get a deal on it through Groupon here –affiliate link) and we got the Museum membership for only $10 as part of their Neighborhood Pass program for those that live in the following zip codes: 14208, 14211, and 14212. Its so great to have so many options to take the kids to when they (and we) get cabin fever.
What’s so great about the Explore & More Children’s Museum? It not only is fun, but it is also educational! They have different Play Zones and a bunch of them are culturally based to help educate children in a fun, play-based setting. There are countries from around the world represented that help you teach your children to be citizens of the world and to appreciate, and hopefully even learn, about their multicultural selves and playmates. Vietnam, South Africa, Netherlands, and more were represented. They got to play musical instruments, play in rice, learn about trade, and other cool things. They even had a library of multicultural books!
There were also areas such as a farm where you get to “milk” a cow, learn how food grows and how to harvest it. There was a kitchen area with all the play things a kid could want! It is such a cute area and my daughter and I had fun in there.
Exploration ROCKS was fun area as well. They had a rock climbing wall and various types of rocks and fossils for the kids to learn about and identify. My kids love collecting rocks so this was fun for them to be able to learn something about them.
There was an underwater type area that had pretend fishing, learning about fish/sushi and underwater relaxing area. The kids loved this part because it was designed like they were in the water and they sure had fun pretending they were swimming.
Make it Go! was fun too… it had a big climb on area that you could then send golf balls down to see if you could get them over the humps. Of course the kids had fun climbing up there and being on top of the world!
Building Curiosity was a super cute and fun area too! My girl got to pretend she was building stuff and painting a house. There were parts you could learn how piping and siding works. Such a good idea for kids to learn about architecture and houses.
We spent a good 2+ hours there and the kids never got bored. They were running around having such a good time. There were a few other play stations, including one for babies that we obviously didn’t go into, but my kids enjoyed their time there so much. There is so much to do and it definitely is a place we will be returning to again as it is such a good way to spend a dreary afternoon and get out of the house! If I do say so myself… I also had fun!!
By the way… like her shirt? You can get it here… with FREE SHIPPING for my readers.
Have you ever been? What are you thoughts? Anything like this in your town? Let me know down below in the comment section.
Thanks for reading!
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