Jan. 27--At two of the area's major children's museums, visitors will find what may come as a surprise, even a shock: little kids using real hammers, real nails and real saws to build things.
The DuPage Children's Museum and Chicago Children's Museum both believe their workshop zones teach valuable lessons in safety, creativity and responsibility and that the occasional bruised thumb can be a more powerful instructor than some sign on a wall.
Still, it's a far cry from the image many may have of children's museums as glorified playpens or baby-sitting writ large. These are active locations, encouraging kids to explore their worlds with gusto (even as their caretakers may want to visit these noisy, sometimes chaotic places with Advil).
The museums are also much more than fun spots to host your kid's birthday party, although they are certainly willing to rent you a room to do so.
While the Chicago area has just one major natural history museum and one major aquarium, its territory is well covered by children's museums big and small, testament both to the eagerness parents have to enrich their young ones' lives and to the sometimes desperate struggle to find something worthwhile to do with a toddler.
Of the three major ones, out west, in a converted lumber business in Naperville, there's DuPage Children's Museum, reimagined after a 2015 burst pipe forced it to open temporarily in an Aurora mall. Back in the main building since September, its credo is age-appropriate explorations of math, science and art, and it comes off as more focused in its approach than the other two.
Downtown, amid the tourist throngs on Navy Pier, there's Chicago Children's Museum, a multilevel fun zone and the largest of the three in square footage.
And to the north, on a campus in Glenview, Kohl Children's Museum offers its version of a place for kids of elementary-school age to engage in water play, reading activities and art projects. In addition to being the oldest of the three, Kohl is the only one that includes outdoor space, the 2-acre Habitat Park just outside the building.
Between them, they draw more than 1 million annual visits, 300,000-plus at the two suburban museums and more than 400,000 at the Chicago institution, which says it is the second most visited children's museum in the country. Add in the region's bevy of smaller children's museums, found in Oak Lawn, Oak Park and many other communities, and you might think there's never a need to park a pre-schooler in front of the TV.
Walk through the DuPage museum's 20,000 square feet of exhibit space on a weekday morning and you'll see kids taking on one innovative activity after another: build-your-own Rube Goldberg machines, room-sized light screens, Habitrail-like wind tunnel contraptions.
"This isn't the type of children's museum where you have the little grocery store," says Katie Edinger, senior public programs manager.
Edinger tells of seeing a child walking around with a basic step stool and thinking it had been liberated from an exhibit. Nope, she realized, the kid had built it in the construction area and was too proud to even put it down.
An elaborate new water-play table is coming later this year, she says. For now, a series of smaller ones satisfy the desire to dampen. The museum began in 1987 in a van, founded by two educators from Hinsdale. Now kids at DuPage can immerse themselves in a giant bubble, freeze their shadows against a projection wall, or try to stand their ground while an airplane-motor-sized fan blows at them.
Like Chicago Children's Museum, it will work with corporate sponsors but will not let them plaster their logos about, to be imprinted on impressionable minds.
Begun by the Junior League of Chicago in 1982 in two hallways at the Chicago Cultural Center (then the main library building), the Chicago museum opened on Navy Pier in 1995. At 57,000 square feet, it more than doubles the size of the other two.
All that space can feel a little disorganized at first, spread over multiple levels. Use the climbing schooner, a three-level simulated ship's rigging of wooden walkways and rope ladders, as an orientation point.
As at the other museums, separate areas for the youngest children are walled off from the general run of the building. One even has its own mini-water-play table. (And, yes, there is a simulated grocery store, and, yes, it is very popular.)
Also popular is the great hall, with kid activities such as foam bowling on the perimeter and couches in the middle. "Frankly, the parents make really good use of the sofas," says marketing vice president Twania Brewster.
Kohl, too, has its own faux supermarket (sponsored, not bashfully, by Whole Foods). That museum, with 21,000 square feet of exhibition space in its 2005 building, lets children be doctors or patients in a pretend nursery, TV weatherfolk against a green screen, or engineers in a room that explores energy sources.
Outside, they can address what an executive calls "nature deficit disorder." Founded in 1985, Kohl has as its animating principle, "providing environments where it's inviting children to play," says public relations director Dave Judy.
And in the Chicago area, children have no shortage of invitations to play.
Chicago Children's Museum, 700 E. Grand Ave. at Navy Pier; admission $13-$14, 312-527-1000 and chicagochildrensmuseum.org
DuPage Children's Museum, 301 N. Washington St., Naperville; admission $10-$12 at 630-637-8000 and dupagechildrensmuseum.org
Kohl Children's Museum, 2100 Patriot Blvd., Glenview; admission $10-$11 at 847-832-6600 or kohlchildrensmuseum.org
sajohnson@tribune.com
