Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Having fun at the museums

I found a new website http://www.azcama.com

It is the Central Arizona(Gila, Maricopa, Pinal and Yavapai counties) Museum Association and is home to nearly 100 diverse museums. It has a list of all the museum around here. You can search by location, name or (my favorite)type. I selected children's museum and it gave me this list:
Children/Hands-On

Arizona Historical Society
Arizona Museum for Youth
Arizona Museum of Natural History
Arizona Science Center
Childrens Museum of Phoenix
Deer Valley Rock Art Center
Desert Botanical Garden
Hall of Flame Museum of Firefighting
Halle Heart Center at the American Heart Association
Heard Museum
Phoenix Art Museum
Phoenix Museum of History
Phoenix Police Museum
The Phoenix Zoo
Pueblo Grande Museum
Tempe Historical Museum

Half these places I did not know about. Some of these museums are free - Firefighter and Police museums, others are relatively inexpensive ($2 for adults, kids free). I was so excited by this. I was trying to decide what to do for spring break and thought, wow, maybe we will go to museums twice and then one day at home, one day at the playground, and hopefully one day making blueberry syrup!

My Sister-in-law told me about the Culture pass tickets to get 4 free tickets to local museums which we will continue to do as it makes it a lot easier on the budget, but I just thought this was great!

This website gives you prices, hours, and location.

2 comments:

sara said...

Thanks for this! I was just thinking today that the kids & I should plan to visit a museum or two during spring break since we have nothing else planned.

Danika said...

I haven't been to many of those, but some are not really young-kid friendly. Here's my thoughts on the ones I've been to, for what it's worth...

AZ Museum for Youth is good, but the really fun part is only for kids under 5 so that wouldn't be very helpful for you since only Maggie would be able to go in.

The Science Center is awesome, but expensive.

Children's Musuem of Phx is the best of all of them in my opinion. But it can get pricey at $9 per person.

We went to the Museum of Firefighting a long time ago, but is NOT for little kids. Lots of old stuff you're not allowed to touch.

Phoenix Zoo is just a normal zoo. Nothing spectacular and often hard to see the animals. If I were spending the time/money to do a zoo, I would go out to the World Wildlife Zoo out in Goodyear. We've not been there but I've heard wonderful things about it.

PS - last I heard they are only doing culture passes through April.