Portland Children's Museum

A few days ago Chance and I had a all day adventure, we rode the light rail to Washington Park which is home to lots of fun things to do like the Children's museum, the World Forestry Center and the Rose Garden. The first thing we did when we got there was head over to the Children's Museum.


The Portland Children's Museum is the sixth oldest children's museum in the country. It isn't the largest children's museum we have been to but it is definitely the cleanest and in the best working order (I didn't see a single thing broken or not working properly). The first room we went to was the water room, they had little plastic smocks for the kids to wear over their clothes, the whole room was for water play. There were water wheels and river tables, boats to float and pumps so we could pump the water up and around the room through tubes. The water room was Chance's favorite, we stayed for a while the first time and at the end when I asked him which room he wanted to go back to before we left this was the room he requested.


One of my favorite areas was the theater, at different times they use it for shows but during off times the kids can just play. There is of course the stage but there is also the wings which they had stocked with costumes to play on one side and special effects equipment like rain sticks and locks on the other. There is also a board out in the audience where you can actually take the lights up and down and push the buttons to play recorded sounds. Chance liked working the sounds and light board then running onto the stage to sing into the microphone.
I liked how they took the Theater theme through this whole area with a garage for building sets and props (Chance was too young to build here) and a dressing room area with face painting (which Chance didn't really care about).


The Children's museum also had a grocery store



A pet hospital



A clay room where we fashioned this little pot. After you finish your creation is left on display all day long for others to see then the clay is recycled at the end of the day.



A room with lots of vehicles to drive and of course a train table.



And a Digging room full of rubber mulch, dump trucks, buckets, shovels and more things used for digging.
After grabbing some lunch in the museum cafe we started walking back toward the light rail station but we got a little side tracked...