Children's Museum in Abilene

Here in Abilene they have an interesting children's museum. It is small actually only half of the second floor of The Grace Museum which is an old hotel that has been converted into an art gallery and children's museum. First we started out going throughout the art gallery downstairs where Chance and I explored each painting making up stories about the houses and people in each as well as finding all the little animals that were hiding in them.
Chance received some great complements from the people working in the museum. They said they had never seen a little person so interested in the art and patient enough to look through the gallery. We've been going to art galleries since Chance was just months old and now that he is older it is fun to make up stories with him about what might be happening in each painting. He has such a great imagination it makes me look at art differently after I hear what he has to say about a particular piece.


after checking out the art we went to the children's museum area. One of the first things we saw was an optical illusion. With one a drawing of a bird on one side and a cage on the other Chance thought it was really cool how the bird magically appeared inside the cage when he turned the wheel really fast.

Just through the next little door they had a tornado! When Chance pushed the button the tornado started up going round and round till the smoke reached the top. We could change the size and way the tornado moved by blowing on it. None of the other children's museums we have been to have had a tornado so this was all new and fun to play with.
We had a great time making music with their music wall so much in fact I didn't think to get a pictured of it. They had a whole wall covered in different color wood blocks all of different shapes and sizes. When you touched the blocks they each made a different sound. Some sounds were instruments like drums, organs and strings others were car horns and nature noises.
Abilene does a great job of making the most of what they have, like the zoo the children's museum is small but they have things that make them unique like feeding the giraffe and this music wall.


After we finished with the children's area we went on upstairs where the have whole rooms set up with period pieces from Texas houses in 1900's, 1920's and the 1940's up here there was also a typewriter Chance could type on, he was supposed to leave a message about how he liked the museum but instead he just typed his name and the words zoo, cat and mom which for a 4 year old will just have to do. He liked the typewriter though and so we ended up typing on it for a while before we left.