Weekend in Raleigh, part 2
On our recent weekend trip, we took a visit to Marbles, the children’s museum in Raleigh. I remember when Marbles first opened in 2001, though it was called Exploris at the time. I was a little too old for children’s museums then so I never went and eventually forgot about it. My mom had reminded me of its existence recently, and after having read Erin’s positive review, we paid a visit two weekends ago.
Marbles is awesome! Nathan and Emily had a blast running around the Around Town section which had kid-sized ambulances, post offices, grocery stores, farms, fire trucks, cars, boats, dress-ups, stage, and so on. They were both so excited that they had a hard time focusing on one activity and kept bouncing between all of them. Thank heavens Chad was there to help me keep tabs on them. I would also highly recommend dressing your child in bright colors – Emily’s hot pink cardigan was easy to spot in a crowd.
Next we headed to the Splash! area, complete with water tables and water toys, a submarine, flippers and stuffed fish to play with, and a giant pirate’s ship. Emily kept saying, “Arrr! I a pirate!” in her best pirate’s voice.
The play section was pretty much as skip, though Chad had fun kicking the soccer balls. The Art Loft and IdeaWorks areas were two more winners for our crowd. Nathan and Emily had fun with glue sticks and buttons, though Emily was a little bit confused at first and thought the glue stick was chapstick. Yikes.
We finished up at the construction part of IdeaWorks, and using the great big Legos, we built a good five-foot-tall house. Chad and I oversaw construction, and I’m quite proud of our tie-ins and other structural features. The next kids there were going to have a difficult time demolishing our house. It was awesome.
I just asked Nathan what was his favorite part, and he said, “All of the parts.” It was even reasonably priced for a children’s museum, and Joshua was well behaved and seemed to enjoy taking in all of the noise and action going on around him. I’m pretty sure we’ll be making a return trip sometime in the near future.
Have you been to a children’s museum yet? How did your kids like it?
