7 Eustis Pkwy, Waterville, ME 04901
Finally another children’s museum in Maine! This one had previously been open but due to covid back in 2020, it closed down. It re-opened this summer! It’s easy to find and there’s plenty of parking. From lot to door is a five minutes or less walk. The price is $8 for ages one and up. For what it is this is a awesome price. It is a non-profit organization so they count of donations and sponsorships. Their summer hours are Thursday-Saturday 9:00-5:00 and Sunday 10:00-4:00. It was about an hour drive from Gray, ME.
The welcome desk is immediately inside the big white doors of the building and on the desk you will see the map of the areas you can go. It’s not much but it’s worth a visit, especially if you live in the area or in the area for a day.
The main room is to the right of the desk. Immediately, taking up most of the rooms space, is what they call “the city.” It is strongly built with different areas to pretend play. You can plant flowers on the rooftop of a building. You can also send hot wheels down a track that starts up top and spirals around to the bottom (although this wasn’t completely for use while we were here). There’s little passageways through this “city” which my 1 & 2 year old loved doing! A car/tool workshop has some pretty neat activities inside, including tool matching, color coded key matching and building a ball maze. A post office can be found at the end of the city. Kids can climb through the mailbox and into the post office. Here they can dress as a mail person and collect mail to deliver. Small mail slots make a cute touch and place for your little mail person to actually deliver mail too. Inside the post office, if they aren’t into dress up, they can move around magnets on a map. These magnets are animals, earth’s oceans and continents. Mix them up, put them where they go, or just take them off and put them on over and over and over again (this is what my 1yo did). On the backside of the city, you’ll find a small wooden car that kids can change tires and match car parts to where the go. My 2yo loved this. Next to that is, is another auto shop type area, although I felt it severely lacked. This is also where the hot wheels come down the track from the rooftop above. There was a sign on the rooftop that it wasn’t ready yet, however, many guests including us, could just put a car on the track from this backside and it was a huge hit with literally everyone.
Across from the city is a farm stand. It can also double at a store or a little cafe. Between this area and the car, idk which my son spent the most time at but it was one of these. The food is all made from felt and there is a lot of various types of food. Kids can throw on an apron, serve you food, go shopping, work the wooden cash register or use the magnetic board on the outside of it.
Behind the farm stand, also to the immediate right of entering the main room, is a baby/soft area. There’s not much to do in this area, even for a baby. My 1yo wanted nothing to do with it. It has soft climbers and pillows. But not much else to it, other than a fishing spot.
There is a weaving area with massive amounts of various yarns and techniques. In all honestly I think it’s a waste of space, not just here but in any kind of children’s museum, reason being that I have never actually seen a child try it. At this museum or any other museum that has one. There is a spinning wheel, which I had no idea how to use and neither did any of the other parents whose kids thought they’d want to try. So I did see it misused or used incorrectly, including from my 5yo (which I put to a stop upon noticing). There are two small tables each with a different fine motor skills activity. My daughter loves crafts. She would do them here there anywhere anytime so this was the very first area she settled in to. On our visit there was “shoe making,” kids used pipe cleaners to thread through a wooden shoe. My daughter made bracelets. My 2yo tried and said the hell with this and then went back to the farm stand. The other table was decorative tape, paper, crayons and stickers.
Behind the weaving station is a smallish table with nature things to explore. There were different animal seats, footprints and feathers. You could look at specimens of insects with a magnifying glass while sporting a explorers vest. While on the small side all three of my kids came back to this three or for times.
Towards the back of the room is a darkened area and inside is a giant climbing log. If climbing isn’t the forte you can crawl throw and there’s different textures on the inside of the log. There are multiple beanbags and pillows for either reading a book (from the dozens and dozens books on display around the entire room) or using as jumping pads. Build a house or cabin from wooden planks. This was on the difficult side for my 5yo nonetheless she kept returning to try. In this half walled space is some balancing blocks and plastic stepping stone rocks.
If you need a quieter area to play, the museum has another room for you to play in. From the front desk, go straight. You’ll see a giant chair to the left for a great photo op and straight ahead a snack area. At rhe snack area take a left and then a right. You’ll come to a room that was likely once an auditorium. It is super hot and humid in here, just as a heads up. There are soft colorful foam building blocks and a set of wooden jenga blocks. A table scattered with an assortment of Legos can be found in this room. Both my 2 and 5yo loved this table and it was difficult to pull them away. My 1yo really wanted to play too but there were just so many little pieces, it’s best to keep the young ones out of it. Next to the lego table is a sensory board type thing. On one side is that texture that you rub up and it changes to a color and then rub it back down and it goes to its “normal” color. Another side is 3d mirrored circles. Lastly a clear panel that you can stick suction type toy to (you probably know the toys I’m talking about but I’d have no idea what they are called. A couple couple tables in the back had some chalk drawing and magnet shape matching game.
We went from 1245-3. We could’ve stayed the last hour until closing but we had already been between the two rooms quite a few times. I don’t think you could do a whole entire day of this but you can easily spend two hours here. Three or more if you’re in no rush. You can bring food, snacks, drinks inside but you can only have them in the snack area. This can stretch your time here by a lot if you plan on this. Which we did. Everything was very well built and everything had great detail to the area. It is a newly open space so there is a lot of possibility here. Personally, I’m excited to see what more they are going to bring in. My kids had a lot of fun with what was already there and the plan to expand looks promising. While there isn’t a whole lot for babies/crawlers to do, even inside the baby area, I still think Children’s Discovery Museum is for ages 0-6. This could change as they add more things but based off our experience today, this is my opinion. I will include in the slideshow, a flyer from them of their future plans and exhbits. The price is fair, at only $8 per person. (Adults paying at places geared for children is a topic I don’t wish to address here but that’s the only gripe I have with the pricing here or any place similar). If you live in the area and haven’t gone, I highly recommend it. I’d say this is worth the drive if the drive is an hour or less. If you’re visiting the area and just need some last minute stops I say go for it but to drive more than hour just for Discovery Children’s Museum I’d say not worth it (at least for now).
little Movers Maine 