Last week during the endless rain, we met our friends over at the ZOOM Museum, which is a super cool kids museum here in Vienna.
New this time was a little garden outside called “Our Rainforest”. It has eight different types of trees that represent the trees commonly found in the Vienna Woods. There was also a little sign explaining about how the root systems of trees in forests trap the rain and prevent floods and erosion. Mostly Oliver just liked climbing up and down the stairs… 
The ZOOM Museum has scheduled times where the kids can explore different areas of the museum. While we waited for our turn, the kids ran around outside and had a GREAT time. Can you tell they have been inside a lot with all the rain?
Our kids are only old enough to visit the Ocean section of the museum. Here is Ollie and our little friend Theo playing with the toy submarine before going inside the exhibit.
At the beginning of our Ocean session, the people from the museum talked to the kids about the ocean and different types of animals that are found there. My kids don’t understand much German, but luckily the words “fisch”, “wasser”, and “oktopus” are pretty easy to translate… Here is Oliver, Theo, and Andrea enjoying the little presentation.
Elora helped move the “water wave” parachute. There were little fish on the top of it that “jumped” when the kids moved the “waves”. Very fun. Then the kids got to crawl under the water wave and enter the ocean!
So Elora and Oliver ran off, and this is where I found them. Tons of cool stuff to explore, but they went straight for the books! This nice girl from the museum read to Elora for about a half hour.
Oliver moved on to the fish hand puppets, super fun to feed little fish to the big fish puppets!
Another favorite area is the big ship with lots of buttons and switches. There are always some scuffles as kids fight to push the buttons. I was actually impressed that Oliver only needed subtle reminders for him to give other kids a turn. Maybe there is hope after all! In the background is a little magnetic map with boats the kids can move around. Also super fun.
When it is time to leave (always a sad time for the kids), the museum workers had all the kids sit on the wave parachute, and pulled them down the ramp, back to the entrance. Super fun, and it saved me from having to deal with tears from both kids.
To end the visit, the kids all get to sit on the big water eel and wait for their turn to crawl through a “water tunnel” and back out of the ocean. Oliver opted to walk around the tunnel, but Elora crawled through it twice. This is such a fun place to take the kids, and so well laid out so the kids have tons of fun things to explore! I can’t wait for the kids to be a little older so we can visit some other sections of the museum. Andrea and Theo had a great time too. In fact, poor Theo cried when it was time to leave. Luckily we found a nice spot for the kids to run around and pick up rocks, and all was well again!
