One day soon after we arrived, Austin and I made a very long trip by Metro and bus to get to the Children's Museum for a day of imaginary play fun. Situated in Laval, in the western suburbs of Montreal, the Children's Museum is a great place to take children aged up to 8 or 10 years old to experience lots of different professions and their tools. The museum houses lots of real life relics including an ambulance, police car, part of an airplane and much more. The whole place is set up so that children can go from one setting to another and touch and play with everything; there's nothing that's off limits in this place!
When we got there, they were just starting the morning entertainment. Two of the staff had dressed up as pirates and were acting out a skit in the pirate ship to the fascination of the twenty-or-so children sitting around watching. Everything was in French so Austin was a bit overwhelmed and only stayed for a couple of minutes before wandering off to the ambulance.
The warehouse building has two levels of activities that children can explore and we managed to cover everything once before having lunch and then starting over again! Each area has props like clothes, hats and pretend objects. For example, in the supermarket, there are mini shopping trolleys and baskets, pretend meat, fruit and vegetables and canned and boxed food. There's no actual food in the boxes; they've filled them with pieces of wood or sand to make them feel real!
There were other fun areas including a farm where children can pull on rubber teats to milk the cow, or sit up on the life sized wooden horse. There was a mechanic shop with a digger that worked and foam bricks to build a wall with. There was even a part of a real plane complete with simulation flying screen and lots of lights and buttons for kids to play with!
Two of Austin's favourite areas were the ambulance, and the supermarket. I thought the best setup was the construction site with the digger and foam bricks and real drills!
Two of Austin's favourite areas were the ambulance, and the supermarket. I thought the best setup was the construction site with the digger and foam bricks and real drills!
But Austin's favourite by far was the room with the broken wall and framework like on a building site. In this room they had lots of ping pong balls that you could put in four different tracks and watch them all go around and end up in the spinning tank. Austin was fascinated and spent ages collecting all the balls and giving them to me to put on the tracks.
This place is definitely a place to spend a day but it is also exhausting for the parents. I felt like I was following Austin around all day and there's nowhere for parents to sit and just watch from the edge. We both slept very well that night!
How to get there
The Musée pour Enfants de Laval is located at 3805 Curé-Labelle Blvd Chomedey Laval H7P 0A5. Bus 61 takes you there from Montmorency. There's plenty of parking.
You can see more pictures and read more about the setup here: http://www.museepourenfants.com/
You can see more pictures and read more about the setup here: http://www.museepourenfants.com/