Great Explorations, The Children's Museum

Exhibits...

Newest Exhibit:

Thanks to our partnership with AT&T you can imagine your future. The Real Yellow Pages are a great resource to get career ideas. AT&T presents three different opportunities to see what you’d look like as a doctor, veterinarian or a member of a law enforcement team!

Forever Family Art Gallery

See the new The Forever Family Art Gallery! This display features personalized “portrait” blankets of children from the Tampa Bay / Pinellas – Pasco Heart Galleries that are decorated with their original artwork. This exhibit was created by Great Explorations to present a forever gift to those kids that may have never had the warmth and comfort of a baby blanket while growing up, and help them find forever families.

An entire wing dedicated to educating children through play about nutrition, exercise and the importance of leading a healthy lifestyle!

I Can Construct sponsored by JMC Communities

Come build, play and learn in our fascinating life- sized tree house. Where you can take on any role you would like, as a building engineer, a carpenter, and many more. A creative hands-on environment where you can climb, role play, and have lots of fun!

Sponsored by Publix Super Markets Charities is a child-sized market where kids can learn to make healthy choices and become responsible consumers in the familiar, yet fascinating environment of a market. We invite children and adults of all ages to learn the value of making healthy eating choices as they shop in the hands-on, interactive market. Using the giant food pyramid painted on the wall, children and adults generate their shopping lists based on creating a balanced diet. Healthy fruits and vegetables line the walls, the shelves are stocked with whole-grain choices and shoppers can find lean meats, fish and poultry. Shoppers can also visit the bakery or dairy isle. Checkout counters hold cash registers with a scanner that beeps.
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Engine Company 15: The Fire House

Explore life as a firefighter in Engine Company 15. Learn how to stay safe in case of a fire. This exhibit includes a fire engine, fire pole, beds, a locker with gear, a full-size mannequin in bunker gear, and a computer station with fire safety games.

Click on images above for a larger picture.

The Veterinary Office

“The Veterinary Office: Be a Great Pet Vet” teaches kids the importance of good medical care for their pets. This hands-on exhibit will allow kids to become the veterinarian and perform examinations with toy stethoscopes and other medical equipment. Although live animals are not a part of our exhibit, children may view real x-rays and microscopic slides of fleas, ticks and other parasites. This permanent exhibit stresses respect, kindness and caring for animals while alleviating children’s apprehensions about a pet’s visit to the doctor. This is a great first encounter for our future veterinarians and vet technicians.

Puppets on Parade
Includes 52 Giant Puppets, 4 Puppet Shows, and 1 Puppet Making Workshop
Full Puppet performances begin with The Wizard of Oz Sept. 26-30, Oct. 17-21, and Nov. 1- 4. Reservations are Required and can be made through Joe Caimano at 727-821-8992 ext. 213 or jcaimano@greatex.org.

Bernoulli Station
An engaging exploration of air pressure, visitors balance balls in streams of moving air. The Bernoulli Station consists of four air vents, over which float several plastic balls.

Laser Harp
Visitors play synthesized music on a harp that has diode lasers instead of strings. The laser beams react to the visitor’s hands as if they are playing a stringed harp. The sounds are transmitted into an external speaker.

Magnetic Hotplates
Visitors experiment with magnets and electromagnetism on “hotplates’ that are programmed to produce magnetic fields similar to those inside an AC motor. In an object bin, visitors find magnets, Slinkys, pendulums and magnetic “worms.”

Touch For Sound
Sound is linked to the sense of touch in an engaging way. A fixed array of 16 everyday objects, ranging from spoons to doorknobs, is arranged on a wall and linked to a computer housing a large library of sounds.

Gears
Large and small gears are intermeshed so they can be turned by a crank, providing the chance to experiment with cause and effect. Durable foam is used for the gears to avoid finger injury.

Great Balancing Act
Identical pine planks, each perfectly smooth and balanced, are used as building blocks for creating many types of structures. Kapla planks are used.

Demo Platform
A platform space designed for interactive performances and experiments.

Design/Build Tables
Visitors employ logic, spatial and creative thinking skills using small scale activities like tangrams, building kits and thinking puzzles.

I Spy
A three-dimensional assemblage of found objects.

Magnetic Poetry
Using flat magnetic pieces with a wide range of words printed on them, visitors assemble words and sentences.

Slap Pipes
A large series of PVC pipes – fifteen pipes cut to different lengths. Each length makes a different sound. Visitors play music by striking a series of the PVC pipes.

Strobe Fan
Visitors experiment with a strobe light and its effects on a spinning disk.

Strobe String
Visitors use a rotating string and strobe light to create different visual patterns.

Roller Coaster Ball Fall
Visitors send a ball shooting down ramps and through 360 degree turns as they experiment witht eh forces of physics.

Climb Wall
Navigate your way from one end to the other at this lateral climbing wall, using foot and toe holds. The climb wall is 18” above the ground.

Lie Detector
Find the truth at our working lie detector. The lie detector uses Galvanic Skin Response to detect lies.

Pull Yourself Up
Buckled to a chair, visitors hoist themselves into the air using a pulley.

Raceway
Experiment with vehicle design, construction and racing. Start at the build station and race your remote control vehicle at the track.

Sailboats
Experiment with air pressure and its effect on sailing. Learn how tacking and sail placement can improve your speed.

Tennis Ball Launchers
Two huge tennis ball launchers invite visitors to fire off tennis balls high into the elevation of the museum. As the balls drop, watch them travel through connectors that cause all kinds of interesting special effects.

Computer Animation
Make your own cartoon at our computer. Kidpix Be creative with computerized art using various colors, shapes, and designs.

Robot Lab
Visit this workbench experiment station loaded with parts and power sources. Create your own robot and then hook it up to remote control and watch it move.

Sound Labs
Play, experiment and create sounds with computers.

St. Pizza
A role-play pizza restaurant where young visitors take pizza orders, make pizza creations with soft sculpture ingredients, bake in a brick “oven” that appears to be lit, ring orders at the register and serve guests at café tables.

Great Beginnings
For 6 year-olds and under. Children are safely enclosed within Great Beginnings, providing a safe, secure environment. Here a vessel projects out, offering a large sail and kid-powered fan to fill it. Board the vessel through glass doors and enjoy signal flags, costumes and props, educational puzzles, building sets, and nooks and crannies of age-appropriate fun.

GREAT SPLASH AREA (upstairs)
Waterworks Demonstration Stage A stage that provides an area for programs on the topic of water. This flexible presentation space allows staff and visitors to work together with water in a supervised setting.

Water Cycle
Use a pinball machine-style contraption to learn about the loop of the water cycle and water conservation.

Estuary Magnet Maze
Birthplace of the majority of the Tampa Bay’s commercial/sport fish species, estuaries are on the most important water ecosystems. Visitors use magnets to guide animals through a maze, finding and following the paths that many species take from shore to the open sea as they mature.

Fish Bites
Sound and information are linked to touch in this exhibit. When the visitor touches one of the metallic fish, sounds of fish and other animals can be heard.

How Much Water?
By seeing how much water goes into everyday consumption, visitors will begin to see that water conservation takes many forms in the choices that we make from moment to moment.

Computer Reveal
This station provides an in-depth information resource for both children and adults who would like to delve further into topics about water and water conservation.

Soup of Life
Using Wentzscopes (specialized microscopes with large viewing lenses to make usage and viewing simple for young people), visitors examine samples of water drawn from sources throughout the Tampa Bay Region.