Arrgh, Mateys! Board our pirate ship and join the crew! The exhibit features a pirate ship where kids can pretend to steer the ship and swab the deck! Encourages role playing and navigating.

Ahoy! Wilmington

The Wonders of Water

This exhibit, funded by the Duke Energy Water Resources Fund, International Paper, and The Women's Impact Network, educates children on the importance of the water cycle while examining natural vs. man-made filtration. This will help to demonstrate how our water cycle naturally filters out contaminants. 

The Discovery Diner was created to highlight the importance of educating young children about making healthy eating choices. This interactive exhibit features a life-like dining area and cafeteria, complete with food from all five food groups! The funding for this exhibit was provided by Delta Dental Foundation and New Hanover County. This exhibit was also made possible by the City of Wilmington. 

Discovery Diner

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This hands-on exhibit is designed to teach children the responsibilities of pet ownership and proper pet care. Children are provided the opportunity to take on the role of groomer, trainer and pet owner!

Animal Alley

Guests ages four and under can crawl, climb, and slide in our beautiful treehouse. This special room is not only fun, active, and entertaining but allows your baby to develop their motor skills. This is a safe space separated from the rest of the exhibits designed especially for your baby and toddler. The area is cozy and squishy allowing your baby to explore textures, shapes, and sounds.

Toddler Treehouse

Visit the studio, a bright open space designed to spark creativity and inspiration for our young artists. Children are encouraged to experiment with different materials as they create imaginative masterpieces. Try your hand at painting, sculpting, drawing, weaving, and more. The Art room features the Lawson Learning Center which incorporates reading and childhood literacy with a dedicated reading area and a puppet theater. 

The Studio

featuring The Lawson Learning Center

Art Room featuring The Lawson Learning Center

Grab a kid-sized shopping cart and shop for produce, cereal, flowers...whatever it is you need. Or work the register checking customers out and bagging their groceries. One of the museum favorites, the grocery teaches children the importance of nutrition, making healthy choices at the grocery store, basic math skills, and real world applications. Sponsored by Publix and Publix Super Markets Charities. 

Community Market

In our pediatric dental exhibit, your child can learn about oral health in an unintimidating environment. Brush the model teeth and inspect for cavities, then hop into a REAL dentist chair to examine the teeth of a Toothasaurus! Sponsored by Dimock, Weinberg & Cherry.

Toothasaurus

Sponsored by Planet Fitness, this exhibit gives kids a fun way to expend energy while learning the importance of always being active. It has a variety of active components for kids to learn about different muscles in their bodies while simultaneously burning energy. These activities include a mini trampoline, elliptical, mini treadmill, a long jump, vertical jump, balance beam, hand bike, stationary bike, and an area for aerobic fitness. 

Kid Power

Kid Power

One of the features of this bone health and healing exhibit, made possible by EmergeOrtho, Morvil Advertising, and local artist Michael Van Hout, is a life-sized skeleton on a surfboard. Hold your smartphone up to identify which bone is which! Kids can have fun signing the giant legs in casts and measuring their strength with a real electronic hand dynamometer. 

Bone Health and Healing 

Using our life-size blue blocks, kids build a new world every day. They can create animals, rocket ships, robots, and cities full of skyscrapers! With an entire floor of open creative space, who knows what they will construct! Encourages engineering skills, critical thinking, problem solving, and imagination.

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Imagination Playground

Visit PORT CMOW! Port CMoW introduces children to the Port of Wilmington in a fun and educational setting. This hands-on exhibit features a freightliner ship which has cargo containers that can be moved by a crane. Historic photos of the port are incorporated into the exhibit and give children a glimpse into Wilmington's past. A video displays footage of Port of Wilmington as it is in operation today!

This exhibit is sponsored by NC Ports and also made possibly, in part, by Filmwerks International.

Port CMOW

Children can play hopscotch, crawl through the worm tube, visit Emma’s River Shanty House, play a fun game of Courtyard I-Spy or hop on the school bus to see where their imagination takes them! Engage little learners by visiting our Pollinator Garden, Native Pollinator Garden, Touch Sensory Garden, Vegetable and Herb Gardens! Use our garden maps to identify plants and learn which animals and insects they attract. 

Outdoor Courtyard

The Matching Wall is an engaging game which complements our Science of You exhibit! Kids are encouraged to answer questions about the skeletal, digestive, circulatory and muscular systems of the human body. Adults and children alike will learn something new on this educational journey!

Matching Wall

This exhibit allows children to build on their understanding of what is inside their own bodies, how we differ from other mammals, and how our bodies allow us to see, smell, hear, touch, and taste the world around us! The Science of You features the nCino Virtual Reality experience. The human body is a machine and we can't wait to turn the gears of our visitors minds!

The Science

of You

Sponsored by Wilmington Health, this exhibit has three main focuses- infant care, anatomy, and wellness. Through role playing with dolls, not only will children learn the basics of infant care, they will improve their social, language, and motor skills as well as learn empathy and responsibility. This exhibit aims to educate children about anatomy and how systems in our body help keep us healthy. Children will also learn how antibodies and white blood cells work together to fight off any germs that may have entered their body with the interactive maze. 

Wellness Way