The Anchorage Museum

Welcome to the

 IMAGINARIUM Discovery Center

a space designed for self-guided exploration.

We hope that you will ENGAGE, BE INSPIRED, and INVESTIGATE the Wonders of the World that is around you but PLEASE follow the RULES to ensure a safe and enjoyable time for all of our visitors.

I just LOVED this opening to the Anchorage Museum.  This sat on a wall before you entered one of the many exhibits.  I thought is was wonderful.  Since we had a membership to the Nature and Science center in Colorado, we were able to transfer it here!  So exploring we went.  We only made it through one exhibit.  Perfect...more outings to come.

SIDE NOTE: Something unique to Alaska is that every museum you go to has a coat/cloak closet of sorts.  The kids school, museums, our church building even has a large walk-in closet for hanging coats, boots, gloves.  So once you enter you go behind a set of stairs to place all of your "Gear" into a locker so you don't have to tote it around.  So nice.  I don't think I will ever dislike this.  I think it should be everywhere cold or not.  When you have kids...you have extra loot to carry around.  Too often I become the pack mule.  Not anymore thanks to these amazing buildings with closets for "stuff"!

So we had a lot of fun at this museum.  It is so wonderful.  Look at this picture...This is only one of the many rooms for this exhibit. This area focused on gravity, electricity, light and air/wind. 

This little contraption kept the boys entertained for over 30 minutes. This allowed Sister to complete her art project as seen below.  A native design.  So the contraption... It circulated balls through different obstacles and tracks.  They would just watch it and be mesmerized...heck...I was too.  It was very soothing and relaxing.  I do not think it was that way when someone was trying to build it.  Super complicated but amazing to watch and guess where the ball would go and what it would stimulate to happen next like dominoes.




Then if you went into the next area it was all bubbles!  Little Man was inside a bubble.  These are the best bubbles I have ever played with.  You can do a window of bubbles, stand in a bubble, or make your own giant bubbles and keep them afloat.  Sooooo much fun.



Then next area had some amazing information explained for a child's understanding the wonders of our world...wind, water, earthquakes, volcanos, tsunamis and glaciers.  It would walk the kids through a tsunami and how water displacement creates different sized waves...so neat...with a real time camera on houses near the shore.  So interesting. It explained Earthquakes; building structures to withstand earthquakes, how land will liquify with earthquakes, how that can lead to tsunamis, how volcanos work and why, how wind can create displacement of land either sand or snow and how this affects our world.  It was so amazing.  We were in this three room area for over 2 hours and I still feel that we could return and have so much fun learning in more detail.  The kids have next Monday off....can you quess where we will be?  That's right...In a bubble at our favorite museum.