Dinosaurs and Poptarts: Discovery Gateway

January 2012

One really nice thing about living in Utah is that it is a very kid friendly place. The mall closest to our house is Gateway, an outdoor mall built for the Olympics. It's pretty cool, has a big fountain where the water shoot sup into the air in time with music. Cam loves to play there, and when he's feelin' brave, he will run across the courtyard and try not to get wet!

My favorite thing about Gateway is the big children's museum/play center they recently built. It's 4 stories and has just about everything you could think of for kids to play with. It's designed so that the bottom floor is for the youngest kiddos, second floor for a little bit older, and so on

These first few pics are from this multi-story ball play area. You can put the balls into tubes which vacuum them up through clear tubing and deposit them in various places. There are hand cranks, buttons to push, wheels to spin, levers to pull...

Remember Plinko?

I really enjoyed watching Cam play on the bigger than life xylophone.

There is a construction type play area set up in the back by the blue wall. Kiddos can load blocks of 'concrete' onto a crane, swing it around, and set the load up on the receiving bay. It takes a little more arm strength to operate it than Cam has, so he was happy to load the blocks onto the sling. There is an adult sized playhouse to the right, complete with a fully loaded kitchen. Cam made me sit at the teeny tiny table (not so easy, still luggin' around some baby weight) and fixed me eggs and milk. He set *5* different cartons of play milk in front of me, exclaiming 'Eat it!'

Another fun area, this is like a water table on roids. The water starts flowing from a waterfall really high up in the back, then flows through this whole long table. They have so many fun toys to play with there, like little animals that swim, boats, squirter toys; kids can build a dam, funnel water through tubing, even use an old fashioned hand crank water pump. Like the kind you see at those historic Old Town places. In the back is classroom where they can do arts and crafts and story time.

These upcoming pictures are from upstairs; they have this enormous open play area with more developmentally stimulating toys/activities ever! They have chalkboards, magnetic boards, legos, oversized legos, earthquake simulator, leaf rubbing... seriously everything. I have taken Cam here multiple times and I always see something new. Below is our favorite wall (cuz it's magnetic). There are pipes fitted with strong magnets on the back, and the goal is to create tracks for balls/car toys to race down. The whole concept of gravity, sloping, angling, etc was a little difficult for Cam, but he still really enjoyed it.