Oak Lawn Children's Museum

I love this place.  The price is right ($6 kids and adults).  We rented one of the party rooms for my son’s birthday earlier this year.  You bring your own food (some local restaurants will offer a discount for those having parties at the museum), drinks and decorations.  There is a fridge and a sink in each party room.  We booked the party room for two hours, but all our guests were allowed to play at the museum for the rest of the day until closing time.  Similar venues have a cut-off time for how long the kids can play.  I loved it.  The kids ate pizza in the party room, went to play in the museum, came back in the party room for cake and sweets, then ran around the museum to work off all that sugar and hopefully went to sleep early for their parents that night.

My 7-year-old Sean is obsessed with trains.  (Sean has PDD-NOS.)  They have a ton of trains here.  With some coaxing, I can usually get him to try something else for the sake of variety.  He loves the slides, reading the many books throughout the museum and building with Legos.  On the first floor, there is a water play area, a sand play area (Sean loved this and playing with the sand was therapeutic for me as well), tubes and “whirlpools” with golf balls to drop in and see where they end up.

 There are many fun areas to stimulate the imagination.  There is a mock grocery store with little carts, aisles with plastic groceries and a check-out counter that beeps as the items are checked out.  There is a woodworking shop where the kids can make wood crafts, supervised, of course.  There is an artwork area for painting and drawing.  There’s an ice cream parlor where the kids can either be customers or behind the counter making plastic cones and sundaes.  There’s an ambulance, fire truck, police car, all with coordinating uniforms.  There is a puppet theatre with a stage, puppets, costumes and props.  There is a house, a veterinarian’s office, an operating room and a milking cow.  Each section has shelves of books that coordinate with the theme of the respective play area.

 My 6-year-old autistic son Todd usually has a hard time “playing well with others.”  This can be extra challenging with non-spectrum kids, who he will just push out of his way, grab a toy from, bite if they take a toy from him, etc.  Todd caused a minor commotion last time in the little grocery store where he was grabbing everything out of the other kids’ carts and putting the things back on the shelves.  He is also happy by the Legos.  He likes to line them up according to shape, color and size.

 Todd usually lines up books and is very happy to spend hours doing so.  After he lines them up, he looks at them from different angles, walks back and forth along different angles, looks at them with just his left eye, then his right eye.  It reminds me of the movie “Temple Grandin,” where she views various things from a geometric perspective and that eventually leads to all her great agricultural science achievements.  When I see Todd obsessing over lines and angles, I fantasize that maybe he’s really a geometry genius.

 This is an affordable place for kids to make a mess, be creative and have a great time.  Great destination for a rainy, cold or hot day.  What a wonderful thing to have in our community!

 

The Oak Lawn Children's Museum is located on Museum Drive in Oak Lawn - just east of 52nd Avenue on 95th Street - Musuem Drive is the first block east of the Metra train tracks.