It is easy to support the Northwoods Children's Museum once you visit. The smiles on the faces of the children, parents and staff are compelling! The Northwoods of Wisconsin is lucky to have such a wonderful resource for families. If you get a chance to volunteer at the Northwoods Children's Museum - take it! They are well organized and you will have a good time.
I have three children ages: 6, 4, and 3. We were looking for something fun to do on our way home and I came across this Children's Museum. I can't say enough positive things about it! I've been to many larger Children's Museums with multiple floors of activities, but this one was all on one level which I thought was nice. It made it so much easier to keep track of my kids who don't always like to do the same things at the same time. Before the kids can go run off and play, they have to stand under a rainbow which separates the gift store from the museum. They are reminded not to cross the rainbow w/o one of the adults they came with, use walking feet, and pick up their toys when finished playing. My 6-year old was totally into this! As a parent I appreciated someone else telling my kids the expectations. My six-year old was serious about picking up after herself. Had I been the one to tell her it wouldn't have been as effective. Even though the museum is small, you can tell it is thoughtfully laid out and there are so many neat play areas for the kids we could have easily spent four hours there. My kids loved driving the ambulance, scanning their grocery items in the store, putting on fancy dresses and firefighter costumes, being on the inside of a large soap bubble, playing house in the log cabin, going "fishing" in the pond, and having stories read to them in the magical tree. There are too many activities/centers to name them all. I've never seen a place have books with "phone numbers" on the covers. The kids pick up the special phone, dial the number on the cover of the book, and then they listen to the story they chose being read to them. How cool is that?!? I feel the cost is reasonable...$7/person. You can stay as long as you'd like. You can even leave and return for free on the same day. Kids can do arts and crafts for an additional fee. We didn't do this, but there were lots of cool projects to choose from including making designer flip flops, painting a wooden car, and squirting a shirt! Sadly, we live in Sheboygan so we won't be back for a while, but we definitely plan to return and spend more time here in the future :)