Children's Museum - Epic Play Time

On an early release day not too long ago, I suggested to the kids that we go down to the Museum Center.  The kids are getting older so access to the museum is less important, except that Tank is still only 8 and he eats it up every time, even if Miciah is sometimes whiny about being "forced" to go.

So we arrived and the kids collectively decided to go down to the ball area.  It's an enclosed section where there are hundreds of those balls, like what you'd jump into in a ball pit.  You can launch the balls against targets, put them up tubes where they are sucked away, and catch the balls as they fall out of a large bin overhead.  The kids haven't played in this area for, I dunno, a few years.

At first Miciah wasn't thrilled.  She decided she was going to sit by me and read a book.  Within minutes, though, she was right in there with them.  I smiled and read my book.

Now, the great thing about going to the museum in the afternoon is that there aren't many other people there.  So you get the run of the place.  In the ball area were my three kids and maybe four other children, all much younger: say, one and a half to three years old.  Those little ones were playing in the area the way I remember my own kids playing years back.  The standard way.  What were my kids doing now?  Sending each other on missions to collect different colored balls.  First all the blue ones.  Then the green ones, and so on.  They did timed missions, and area specific missions.  I was amused.

And then, some time later, I looked around and realized that the balls were gone.  In all my years of going to the museum, I have never seen the floor devoid of balls.  I suddenly realized that these missions had all ended with taking these bags full of balls and dumping them into a chute where they were not accessible to the other children.  The chute is connected to a treadmill of sorts, where as you walk, a ball is sent over to the overhead bin, one at a (very slow) time.  Normally the overhead bin empties every few minutes, but apparently the mechanism that releases the balls is not connected to the chute, so the balls just kept accumulating.

Random picture I found on-line of the balls falling from the chute, like they're supposed to do!

I watched these small children look longingly at the balls stuck out of reach in the chute and bin.  I called to my kids, "Hey, guys!  Give some balls to the little kids."  Miciah gave out a bag or two, in a generous gesture.  Elijah, however, was not happy to give up some of his hard-earned balls.  He was on a mission and the little kids were screwing it up!  At one point the bin was opened by a museum worker with a stick, and the little kids danced and cheered.  Elijah is fast, though, and within a few minutes, all of those balls were snatched up, too!

Another random kid with a bag of balls.  Notice all the balls on the floor.  Now imagine all those balls NOT on the floor.

A two-year-old boy ran across the play area, a single ball in his hands stretched high over his head, his face lit-up with excitement.  The littler kids walked around looking and were so excited to find one lurking in the corner that Elijah had somehow missed.

Two parents standing next to me realized what was going on.  One said, "I guess those kids collected all the balls."  I rolled my eyes and said, "Yeah, those are my kids.  Sorry about that."  The other parent didn't look so amused, since he was now aware that his daughter had nothing to play with.  But parent number one was nice.  "They must have worked really hard collecting them all."  "Yeah."  What else do you say?

The kids played there for a full 2 hours, and by the end, the two dads were inside the ball area, opening up, with their hands, the now very full overhead bin and watching the balls pour down on their kids.  Elijah, I am certain, was watching all his hard work get ruined as the little kids played happily.

On the way home the kids talked about this epic play time.  As they talked they discovered the economic principle of scarcity.  "It was like the balls were money," and,  "We could have gotten rich if we charged for those balls."  Though I did say, "Yeah, but how much can a two-year-old pay you?" and, "Also, those weren't actually your balls.  So I'm pretty sure you can't sell them."  Miciah congratulated herself on being so generous with the little kids, giving them bags full of balls and watching their eyes light up, and I reminded her that her "generosity" was only possible because she had first been really stingy.  "Oh.  That's true."  But in the end it didn't matter.  In their minds, the play session had been a triumph!

And while I didn't take a picture, the mental image of the ball area floor being completely clean will stick in my mind forever.  Along with the little boy running around, eyes agleam, with a single ball in his hands.