January 2006

Play, Create, Manipulate at
New KidsQuest Children’s Museum

By Wenda Reed

After five years of planning, the new KidsQuest Children’s Museum is open in Factoria Mall in south Bellevue, and it’s a blast!

Seven children from the Downtown Bellevue YMCA’s pre-kindergarten program were the first visitors to the museum prior to its official opening Dec. 11. In their shakedown tour, they clambered up and over ladders and staircases and slides and found dozens of ways to play with the new exhibits – including some the adult designers hadn’t envisioned.

Right across from the front door, visitors will find five massive, textured concrete tree trunks, so like real trees that you’ll have to touch them to believe they aren’t wood. (See if you can find the chipmunk, woodpecker and slug hidden in the structure.) A sprawling treetop “Clubhouse,” accessible by two ladders or a staircase, delighted the 4-and-5-year-olds, who immediately became “bad pirates.” You can see the whole museum from there, peeking at things through binoculars or a telescope, looking at a compass on the floor below or talking through tubes that connect to other exhibit areas.

The children were immediately drawn to the multi-faced “Waterways” exhibit. Kids can take apart and rebuild suspension and floating bridges over a shallow pool, and manipulate dams as they navigate boats through a rocky channel. They can press buttons to make water turn wheels, flow through tubes or move gyroscopes in the Water Engineering area. About 100 gallons of water flow through “Waterways,” and it didn’t take the boys long to figure out how to connect the clear tubes together and divert some of it out of the tanks and onto the surrounding, water-resistant carpet.

In a “Big Dump” installation, unique to this museum, children can see who can fill suspended buckets with water and make them spill their loads first. Especially arresting is the “Water Music” display on the back wall: Press buttons to squirt water and play chimes, cymbals or drums. On the quieter side, children can “paint” low rocks using water resting in shallow pools or watch science experiments involving water. Smocks are provided for the whole area.

The pre-kindergarten kids were a bit old for the “Backyard” exhibit behind the giant tree trunks, as it is geared for children from birth to age 4. Three components caught their interest: the bentwood leaf climbing structure and slide, the extensive Brio®
train lay-out and the caves hollowed out of the tree trunks and filled with puppets and animals to use in the puppet theater.

If you bring toddlers, babies and younger preschoolers, you’ll find much to delight them in the “Backyard.” A half dozen colorful birdhouses serve as walk-in busy boxes, where children can look through kaleidoscopes, sort and manipulate objects, and try out zippers. Children can build forts with Adirondack-style chairs and blankets, play with water or sand toys in a big galvanized tub, or listen to the sound animals make, as interpreted by people in different languages. Babies who are not yet crawling can play in a giant “baby basket,” while parents and caregivers sit on the edge.

Smaller children cannot get out of the “Backyard” unless an adult opens the door, but parents can easily see older children playing in other areas of the museum.

Older kids, especially those 6-12, will be drawn to the “Garage.” Most prominent is the cab and front compartment of a semi truck, donated by Western Peterbilt. Kids can run the lights, horn, radio and CB and “pump” gas.

Physics connects this interactive space, but none of the learning is dry. A fantastical “Automata” illustrates the seven simple machines, including wheel, pulley, gear and screw, with dozens of interconnected parts you can move. Construction workers can build a house out of over-sized, notched builder boards and engineers can reconfigure the ball wall to send balls in different directions. A giant mobile-making station teaches kids how to balance shapes and weights.

One of the most interesting areas is the “Garage Land Band” area, where you can play a “soleful” piano (yes, the keys are made out of real shoe soles), a frying pan drum set or a mounted electric guitar.

Visiting artists, including doctors, architects, snowboard makers, puppeteers or gardeners, will give demonstrations and spark ideas. “The whole garage is about tinkering, designing and building,” summarizes Museum Director Putter Bert.

Throughout the museum, find galvanized pillars with images for nonreaders at the lowest level, questions for children to think about in the middle, and generic parenting tips at the top.

Around the perimeter of the 10,000-square-foot space, visitors will find a painting from Medina Elementary School, historic photos of Bellevue, a self-face-painting station with mirrors, an aquarium, a giant world map and spaces for art projects and birthday parties. There’s plenty of room for stroller parking, coat hooks and lockers. Explore Store is located near the front entrance.

There’s enough here to keep children occupied for repeat visits, but the staff has made sure there’s always something different to do. Each of the exhibit area has 20 different boxed activities that will be rotated throughout the year. In addition to the visiting artists, partnerships with the Eastside community bring more variety: Big Tool Time projects with Home Depot every first Tuesday, weekly visits with different animals from Petco, after-school science camps run by Amgen, and health-related programming provided by Overlake and Group Health Hospitals.

The Portico Group of Seattle designed this whole fantastical place. For Eastside children – and those from surrounding communities – it’s time to play (and incidentally learn).

Wenda Reed is editor of Seattle’s Child and Puget Sound Parent.

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