museums – The Next Kid Thing

Dora and Diego—Let’s Explore at Liberty Science Center + giveaway

January 12, 2016January 12, 2016 by Jen Rabulan-Bertram

Just before all the holiday chaos started, we were invited to explore the Dora and Diego exhibit at Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, NJ.

There’s so much we love about LSC, but the educational and interactive exhibits rank pretty high up on our list.

At our most recent trip to LSC we had the chance to explore the Dora and Diego—Let’s Explore! exhibit. If there was ever an exhibit that adequately examines the curious nature of toddlers and preschoolers, Dora and Diego—Let’s Explore is it. The exhibit features Nickelodeon favorites, Dora and Diego, along with their buddies, Boots, Map, Backpack, Isa, Tico and Swiper.

This exhibit was created by The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis in partnership with Nickelodeon and will be at LSC until January 24th.

Like the popular Nickelodeon shows from which this exhibit is based, Dora and Diego—Let’s Explore is an exhibit that encourages adventure, curiosity and how to solve problems while engaging Spanish speaking skills for preschoolers.

Highlights from the exhibit include:

The Purple Planet – Kids can climb inside and slide down on the surface of the whimsical Purple Planet

Rocket Ship – Dora and friends need a ride to the Purple Planet. At the Rocket Ship, kids can suit up, pilot the ship and play memory with planets.

Constellations – Kids can learn about stars and identify the patterns made out of stars by inserting star shapes to light-up a constellation

Isa’s Flowery Garden – At the Flowery Garden, Dora’s friend Isa the Iguana helps kids learn the beauty of flowers, plants, and animals. At Isa’s Garden, kids can pick flowers, interact with bird, butterflie, and insect puppets

Tico’s Tree and Car – Tico the squirrel needs help picking nuts from the tree for a family picnic. Kids can play along with Swiper to swipe the nuts and watch as they shoot up and over to fill Tico’s basket. Kids can help Tico fill up his car with nuts so he can begin his journey.

Pirate Ship – In the Pirate Ship, kids can band together with Pirate Piggies crew and dress like a pirate and sail the ship and share the treasure treasure.

Animal Rescue Center – Kids get a hands-on opportunity to care and help (stuffed) rainforest animals in Diego’s Animal Rescue Center. Kids can be an animal rescuer like Diego, as well as diagnose and help treat critters with the Scanner bed, First-Aid Station and fluff their fur at the Care Station.

Rainforest Maze – At the rainforest, kids can locate rainforest animals and swing across the Bobo Brothers’ monkey bars, crawl through a fallen tree, climb across Jaguar Mountain, and jump or hop across the River Rocks.

Though the exhibit is geared to the younger set, both my preschooler and grade schooler enjoyed Dora and Diego—Let’s Explore. The many interactive features, games and activities kept my kids engaged for well over an hour and a half.

At the Rocket Ship, both kids loved role-playing and pretending to blast off. Tico’s Tree and Car was a fun activity for both kids, especially my preschooler who was excited to pick nuts and fuel up himself. At the Rainforest Maze, my 8 year old enjoyed climbing and helping his little brother jump and swing around. The Animal Rescue Center was another favorite for my boys, where they were able to partner up and play vet together. I loved listening to my older son read the little signs and share interesting information throughout this super fun experience.

Dora and Diego—Let’s Explore is a fantastic interactive exhibit that’s ideal for toddlers and preschoolers, but engaging for the entire family. LSC has been one of my family’s absolute favorite museums in NJ since my older son was an infant. There’s always something for everyone in the family to enjoy. It does get crowded on the weekends and at peak times, but it’s always a lot of fun. And as winter limits family activities, what better way to spend a cold day with family than exploring at LSC.

With that in mind, in conjunction with What’s Down in Town, we’re giving away a family 4-pack of tickets to the Liberty Science Center that includes admission to Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition gallery. This giveaway will end on Friday to give you a chance to enjoy LSC over the long weekend! Please enter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

In order to facilitate this review, we received complimentary admission to LSC. Promotional tickets were provided for giveaway. As always, all opinions are my own.

Highlights from the Kidz Vuz Back to School Bash

July 31, 2015 by Jen Rabulan-Bertram

Our friends at Kidz Vuz always know how to throw a party. And luck us, we had the chance to participate in their really cool Back to School Bash.

Held at the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel, the Kidz Vuz Back to School Bash was a great mix of fun family and tween brands, many of which we already know and love. We did, however, have a chat to chat with brands or products that were definitely the epitome of The Next Kid Thing! I’ll have to do several posts about the Kidz Vuz Back to School Bash, but for now, I wanted to share some of our favorite new and upcoming things in the kid realm.

MetKids, one of my personal favorite concepts at the BTS Bash is a digital aspect made for kids, with and by kids. I was shown a cool app that kids can use in collaboration with the Met. There’s a cool app that kids can use while at the Met, as well as on its own. The features will launch soon, but I loved learning about MetKids. What a fun way to get the kids more engaged while at my favorite NYC cultural institutions!

LegoDimensions seemed to be Jack’s absolute favorite booth, considering we spent most of our afternoon there! Lego Dimensions is a new game that merges physical LEGO brick building with digital gameplay.

It will feature some of your family’s favorite brands including DC Comics, The Lord of the Rings, Scooby-Doo and The Simpsons…all in the Starter Pack! Players begin the LEGO Dimensions experience by building the LEGO minifigure heroes, LEGO Batman, LEGO Gandalf and Wyldstyle from The LEGO Movie, and fire-up the game.

Following the in-game build instructions to assemble the loose bricks, creating the LEGO Gateway and placing onto the LEGO Toy Pad to transport the characters into the game. It will be available for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation4, PlayStation3 and the Wii U system from Nintendo. On the heels of the popularity of Skylanders and Disney Infinity, we’re absolutely loving this concept and can’t wait for it to be released on September 27, which just happens to be Biggie’s birthday!

Biggie had a great time checking out Wonder Workshop. He had a chance to play around with robots, Dash and Dot and get a glimpse of the fun of coding and engage in STEM! I loved seeing all the kids control these cool robots. I even had to jump and raise my feet a few times when the robots went rogue! So fun!

We had such a great time at Kidz Vuz Back to school bash and will be sure to share more of my favorites!

Sesame Street Presents: The Body Exhibit at Liberty Science Center Provides Hands-On Fun

March 27, 2015 by Jen Rabulan-Bertram

Liberty Science Center is no stranger to family-friendly exhibits. In fact, as the most visited museum in NJ and the largest interactive science center in the NJ/NYC metro area, more than half a million students, teachers and parents visit LSC each year.

New this year, everyone’s favorite furry monsters have found their way to LSC. Having debuted in January 2015, Sesame Street Presents: The Body is comprised of a myriad of hands-on exhibits geared to engage the curiosity of the littlest scientists.

The exhibit, which explores the human body and how to keep it healthy, features three education zones: Your Insides, Your Outsides and Staying Healthy.

Your Insides explores bodily functions and weaves familiar monsters into the interactive features. Count’s Organ Organ teaches kids about internal organs with a musical twist; Digestion with Oscar keeps it real with a display that shows kids what happens after the food goes down the tubes and Oscar’s Sneeze Machine allows kids to pull a lever to irritate a big nose that actually sneezes on them.

Your Outsides allows kids to identify body parts while learning what they do. Wonderful Hands includes puzzles sign language games shadow puppets, among other fun activities. “Your Legs and Feet” shows kids what happens when your legs are in motion and “Use Your Head,” is another interactive feature where questions can be asked and answered about the parts of a head.

Staying Healthy overviews the importances of staying clean, making smart food choices and getting lots of rest and physical activity. Ernie and Rubber Ducky provide a fun activity with Rub-a-Dub Tub, but Mr. Hooper’s Store is the highlight for hands-on exhibit.

My 7 and 3 year old quite possibly spent 2 hours in this exhibit. From learning all about how everyone poops to kicking a soccer ball to grocery shopping non-stop, The Body kept both my gradeschooler and preschooler entertained and engaged with educational content and iconic characters we know and love.

Since we visited on a weekend, the caveat to this exhibit is the high volume of museum-goers. Museums in general can be sensory overload, even moreso when you can barely walk through a crowd of small kids. As with any museum on a weekend, be prepared to wait for interactive features and taking turns with other kids. But truly, the wait and crowds are worth it, especially for the preschool set.

We enjoyed checking out Sesame Street Presents: The Body, courtesy of LSC and JerseyMoms Media. LSC has hosted bloggers several times, but I seem to always have the most fun when my friends from JerseyMoms Media co-host.

Not only do my fellow NYC and NJ bloggers get to socialize with our families, but we get to enjoy a day of educational fun. My kids absolutely love hands-on fun—and if it was up to them, the dirtier the better. Learning how to make “blood” was one of the coolest activities I’ve seen for this age group. A big thank you to LSC and JerseyMoms Media for hosting our family.

And speaking of hosting, LSC gave us passes to giveaway to our readers! If you’d like to check out Sesame Street Presents: The Body with your family, enter for a 4 pack of tickets below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Full disclosure: I am being compensated for my time and travel to LSC. As always, all opinions on NKT are my own.

MoMA Adds Hoberman Sphere to its Collection

July 29, 2010July 29, 2010 by Jen Rabulan-Bertram

Since I’m on the topic of innovative design, let’s talk about spheres, specifically, the Hoberman Sphere.

You probably know it as that colorful expanding and collapsing circular ball-like toy, but did you know that the Hoberman Sphere was originally a sculpture and the product version has been used as props for marching bands, devices for physical therapy, aids for breathing exercises, and to illustrate organizational and motivational business principles?

In fact, an original Hoberman Sphere was installed in 1992 (and re-installed in 2007) as the central exhibit in the Liberty Science Center’s atrium, which happens to be one of our favorite local museums. Being greeted by the amazing 700-lb sphere at the LSC, is perhaps one of the kid’s most memorable aspects of the Jersey City facility. I love that he associated this sphere with the LSC atrium, before he associated it with a toy. Of course, now he just wants that giant sphere for his playroom!

3214276658_571fd2c26d — photo credit: CateNJ

The Hoberman Sphere, which has been in production as a toy since 1995, is considered iconic for its product design. Aptly, the Museum of Modern Art has added the Hoberman Sphere to its Action! Design Over Time collection. According to MoMA, the exhibition investigates the dimension of time in human-made objects, products and interfaces, with the aim of providing a deeper understanding of contemporary design.

The Hoberman Sphere can be viewed at the MoMA, as well as the Liberty Science Museum, and of course, the toy version can be found at stores such as Target and Amazon.

The MoMA is located at 11 West 53rd St., NY, NY.

The Liberty Science Center is located at 222 Jersey City Blvd., Jersey City, NJ, and is just a short train ride away from NYC.

Click this: Kids off the Couch

April 16, 2009April 16, 2009 by Jen Rabulan-Bertram

Are the kids on spring break this week? Have you run out of ideas on how to keep them from climbing the walls and everyone involved sane? If this is you, it’d behoove you to check out Kids off the Couch.

When I ran across the website, Kids off the Couch, I immediately thought, ‘what a great resource!’ Kids off the Couch is a free weekly e-newsletter that offers insightful suggestions on family-friendly activities. The e-newsletter and its accompanying site and blog were created by moms and targeted to other parents, especially those with big kids. It features a laundry list of creative ideas and activities for families with kids of all ages, including tips for movie ideas, cultural activities and staycation suggestions that are relevant all year long, not just for spring break. As I browsed through the adventure archives, it was one of those “why didn’t I think of that?” moments. Well, thanks to the moms at Kids off the Couch, here’s a resource that takes the guesswork out of finding that next family adventure! As someone who appreciates culture and local adventures, this is the kind of newsletter that is a great addition to my inbox.

Go on, after you sign up for their newsletter, unplug yourselves, get off the computer and get the kids off the couch!