Explora!

While we were in Albuquerque, Jeremy took us to Explora!, their children's museum/exploratorium. It was awesome. I love the look of it and the fact that it had a special parking place for bicycles.


Highlights inside include an awesome picnic area on the roof, the most bad ass elevator ever, a bike you can ride on a tightrope (if you weigh more than 90 pounds, and some great views.


They had some really cool water experiments and lots of hands on play activities. We could have easily let the kids fixate on any of them for a long while, but we were anxious to see everything.


Explora! has some cool wind experiments like this one where the kids get to build "ships" and set them to sail in front of a box fan.


After awhile I felt like we were in a really crafty mom's house because a lot of the activities are things you could do at home, but just wouldn't out of laziness. If we lived in ABQ, I'd definitely get a membership to Explora and let the kids get to know it like the back of their hands.

One of our favorites was the "make your own robot that can color" station. A cup, some velcro, a few markers and a battery can do some pretty cool things. Just watch:



And we could have taken pictures of each other through the giant kaleidoscope all day!


Obviously I could go on (and on), but I'll leave you with some scenes from the Paradox Cafe which is full of all sorts of puzzles, some of them reminiscent of the kids' Montessori materials. All we needed was a nice cup of coffee and we might have never left.


To sum things up--go visit Explora! the next time you are in Albuquerque. It's super fun for the whole family.