Staten Island Children's Museum — Local services in New York

$6 a person Dated, less then perfect condition. Waste of time for older than ~5 y. BUT if you live near or happen to be there AND you child is 1-5 or you have a bunch of kids - place is great! Child proof, simple (bordering primitive), multiple sections. Child (better children) can spend half hour easy at each: huge dominoes (pillow sized and felt at touch), over sized checkers, tick-tack-tow; padded contraptions where kid engineers falling ping-pong ball route; over sized inter-lockable wooden LEGO (-like) build-able into child size house (or else); realistic, yet padded and simplified firetruck, gear you may try on, pole you swing down, buttons, sounds, lights, * Arctic zone where you travel behind dogs on a sled, wear snow boots; forest (jangle) with sounds to identify and telescope to spot stuff; submerging with aqualung, communicate with buddies through water wall using (provided) hand gestures, discovering hidden in depth darkness creatures with a spot light (broken: bring flashlight); bugs zone big and creepy (good way), be a bug, wear bug exoskeleton, watch live roaches (huge too), beehive (currently perished, should be easy to re-establish), crawl as an ant, check out prehistoric insects, read books (quite a few there). Along the way you can just lay down or sit and read while your little one jumps around. There is a theatrical section with actual stage, some light and sound effects, costumes, changeable decorations, audience (got to fill out with viewers though). You may spend a day just there, but have to have some imagination and creativity. Although they have some kind of story-telling in their schedule: I assume to create a theatrical kind of story. There are two outdoors sections also (dolphins and boats) All that from the prospective of a 5 y.o. We wondered in with 10 y/o an were bored, yet bowled a round, played checkers, built some Grommet-inspired monstrosity, fooled around at the "theater"

Bonus: outside is a big park you can walk all over, several museums (all tiny), botanical garden, maritime exhibition (open Th-Sn), nearby Staten Island ferry (commute and a view), tug boats sneaking around huge tankers, Manhattan view, we run into movie shutting: gangster times, Ford D parked around - surrounding houses and few buildings are mostly old and sometimes interesting; multiple rough looking new yorkers of the same time period (they need not to dress specially: they walk around like that..)

We did not like it, but when/if I have a few children 2-5 y.o. and another adult to tender the heard, I will make a day of it. Bring sandwiches and Sherlock...

This place would get 5 stars since I come here a lot and my kids love it but sadly yesterday around 2pm we were approached by this young girl with a mask on her chin and ironically she made a disturbing face cause my son coughed… she made a comment about not wanting to get sick and through her mask on her face the correct way..it was pretty upsetting she noticed I was bothered and she said to me that she doesn’t want to get sick anymore ..which I understand but I also laughed because THIS IS A CHILDREN MUSEUM.. it’s a place that caters to children and there lovely germs it’s sad that the employees aren’t equipped to professionally deal with kids let alone speak to parents properly.. mind you it was freezing out so he was probably catching his breath from running from the car to the museum..it was highly insulting to get treated like this especially by genius wearing a mask on her chin worrying about getting germs from children at a...

I live in Jackson Heights area so it was a bit of a drive to go to State Island Children's Museum but well worth it. Free parking and great museum. Not expensive $8 per person compared to the museum in Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn and Bronx. My kids loved it. Each floor had different stuff and each section had costumes that your children can dress up to. For example the fire truck had fire fighter dress up with the helmth, the animal section had doctor dress up, the construction had costumes. My kids loved it. You can bring your own lunch to eat with your kids at the cafeteria, the vending machine $1 and the gift shop small but $5.50 toys. They also have ice cream and a painting area. We loved it. We were there 5 hrs and my kids were worn out by the time we left. Highly recommend...