Strong Play

Now that my blog is more than a year old, I'm running into the problem of potentially repeating myself. Of course I frequently encounter the challenge of finding new and interesting ways to present repeat information in my freelancing job, but I didn't quite realize that would be an issue with the blog...

Yesterday we visited the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, which we also did last summer (and Clare the summer before that). And we'll visit it again (and I'll likely blog about it again), because it's amazing. As Clare said, "It's the best museum ever." So okay, she hasn't been to the Louvre or the Uffizi, but for a kid I think it really might be the champ. It's a bit of a drive for us, about 75 minutes, and with Danny that meant enduring quite a lot of "are we there yets?" (both ways). Once we arrived, however, we easily passed nearly six hours, so it's more than worth it.

Danny didn't remember last year's visit, but the horse statue outside of the building coupled with the carousel immediately inside the entrance alleviated any doubts he may have had. Though he really shouldn't have had any, because Clare was so effusive about the place on the drive there. From the moment we booked our trip to Buffalo she was anticipating this particular outing. I feared that she might prove to be too old for it this time around, but instead she seemed to love it even more. It helped that she discovered a stash of American Girl books in the attic of the Victorian house. In fact, books are stocked liberally throughout the museum, which is one of the biggest appeals to me (surprise, surprise). "Reading Adventureland" was understandably a big hit with them, bringing to vivid life a number of familiar fairy tales.

I thought we spent a lot of time in this area, but then we traveled down the proverbial sunny dirt road to Berenstain Bear Country, where we wound up staying for more than an hour. It shouldn't have surprised me, because both Clare and Danny are crazy about the books and the show. When Mama Bear came out it was the cherry on top!

Other highlights included everything from a "real" grocery store to a helicopter to race car video games to dump trucks. It's tough and frankly boring to give a full litany of all that we did. We certainly exhausted Danny, who was beside himself for much of the car ride home. However, as soon as they arrived back at Grandma's house, the two of them quickly set to work making their own merry-go-round out of paper, cardboard, tape, stuffed animals and Legos. This brought full circle the quote painted above the entrance to the museum: "Play is our brain's favorite way of learning." (Diane Ackerman, Contemporary American author)