Category: Museums

Play is work and work is play, they say. The Habitot Children’s Museum offers kids a quality opportunity to learn and explore through imagination and discovery. A hands-on learning center, the museum includes such sites as a toddler garden with wooden carrots in holes, padded tunnels to crawl through, and a miniature café and grocery store to navigate through. Children around age three and above can spend an unfathomable amount of time playing in a their-size world.

The short 20-minute drive to the museum, located in Berkeley, is absolutely worth experiencing this popular and well-run establishment. The Habitot Children’s Museum even hold its own special exhibits, such as the Fire Station display where kids can touch, move things, climb and jump (and learn as children do best). Other special exhibits include Train Week, where children can run trains at a brand new train table, ride on miniature trains, play with mini BART trains, and even create a boxcar. They can participate in the Day with the Dentist exhibit, and listen to professional dentists talk about teeth health, receive gift bags, make and decorate a giant toothbrush, and play toothbrush limbo. Learning doesn’t get much more fun than this.

Habitot is a great venue for special events, camps, and classes. The museum is a fun and creative way to spend a birthday. Birthday party rental options includes a 2-hour rental for up to s75 guests for $325; a birthday room rental at the cost of $16 per child; and private parties for 30 guests for $295. The museum also holds special classes for both children and parents. Classes for children include such focuses as ceramics, drama, carpentry, and cooking. Parents can take CPR classes and become certified, can learn about anger management, or can learn how to potty train their child. Habitot holds week-long seasonal camps in winter and spring, which includes art, music, stories, dramatic play, and of course free exploratory play and snacks.

For such a great experience, deciding to make the drive is a no-brainer. And the ride back will seem even shorter with a fun discussion that will inevitably ensue. Let your children (and their imaginations) run wild.

Does this paint the right picture: you love museums, you want your kids to love museums, your kids could care less at their age about Rubens? Teach them to love museums by taking them to Zeum (Ze-um), a non-profit multimedia arts and technology museum. Their main mission being to foster innovation and creativity, this unusual museum invites people of all backgrounds and ages to “combine hands-on use of animation, digital technology, electronic media, traditional and non-traditional materials, and the power of their imaginations to create high quality stories, movies, performances, music, art and more.” Zeum’s curriculum focuses on project-based learning, constructivist theory, and media literacy—a growing need in this age of technology.

Opened atop the Yerba Buena Gardens as a part of a radical 87-acre urban renovation project in San Francisco’s Market area, Zeum boasts a 34,000 square-foot building designed by the talented Adele Santos. The facility includes technology studios, interactive activity stations, exhibit galleries, community exhibit space, and a theater.

For beginners and experts alike, this crazy awesome museum offers exhibits that focus on five arts and media subjects: Animation, Video Production, Sound Production, Performance, and Visual Arts. Patrons to the museum can play around with clay animation, compose a soundtrack, make a rockin music video, or do digital art. Make up a story, choose your own karaoke tune (from over 2,000 songs!), choose a costume, create clay characters, choose stage sets, work with camera angles, film scenes, work on stop-motion animation, and even act. You can even your finished project home with you!

Such an educational experience requires a stellar staff. Zeum employs a staff that includes events council, an advisory council, programs and experience council, educators, employees and volunteers. And of course this cool museum offers extras such as fieldtrip options like Clay Animation, where students design their own characters and product a short claymation film, News Broadcast, and Music Video. Zeum is also available for birthday party rentals, including themed parties like Pick a Dress-up Party, Mad Hatters Party, and Zeum Scavenger Hunt.

Such an educational experience requires a stellar staff. Zeum employs a staff that includes events council, an advisory council, programs and experience council, educators, employees and volunteers. And of course this cool museum offers extras such as fieldtrip options like Clay Animation, where students design their own characters and product a short claymation film, News Broadcast, and Music Video. Zeum is also available for birthday party rentals, including themed parties like Pick a Dress-up Party, Mad Hatters Party, and Zeum Scavenger Hunt.

If you have a love for contemporary art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is an absolute must. Just the building in which the museum is housed is a sight to behold. Built by famed Swiss architect Mario Botta, this is one of the most remarkable of the attractions in San Francisco. Whether you meander down the corridors by yourself or take your family, there is going to be a piece that catches your eye and your heart.

The museum is comprised of more than 25,000 works of art ranging from paintings to sculptures, architecture and design, as well as media arts. There are standard exhibits as well as moving exhibits that come through the museum for a few months and then move on to other popular art museums in the world. They want everyone to experience the works of artists such as Matisse, photographers such as Munkacsi, and architects such as Felix Schramm. Whatever medium makes your heart soar you can find at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The artistic program at the museum remains true to the founder’s original vision and is devoted to the exhibition of works that truly showcase the range of modern art. There are oils, canvas, and acrylics just to name a few. The names of the artists may sometimes be unknown but the paintings and art that you see are unmistakable.

Since the conception of the museum in 1935, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has been exhibiting photographs as a true art form. They embrace a wide range of subjects and give you a view of the world in a much different way then what you would read in history books. The photographs are collected from all over the world and embrace it as we have never seen before.

The architecture and design collections show the modernism of how buildings, appliances, and even furniture have developed over time. They not only include designs themselves but drawings, models, photographs, sculpture, and video to give a factual account how the world has evolved. They are one of the only modern art museums that emphasize experimental work in range of design mediums.

Admission:

Adults: $12.50
Seniors: $8
Students: $7
Children (12 and under): Free