COSI in Columbus OH

I always look on the ASTC site when we are in an area to see what museums we can get into with our membership. Like I have said before this membership has saved us SO MUCH money and has allowed us to go to more places then I would have paid for. I looked on the site and found that COSI was about 2 hours from us. COSI stands for Center of Science and Industry. Now we have been to MANY science museums over the last couple of years. Many of them have a lot of the same stuff but this was was different. It had the old stand by exhibits but it had some amazing thing as well. 

First on the list of things to do when we got there was of course the Planetarium. Eric wants to be an astronomer when he grows up so I make it a point to visit all the planetariums around us. This one we did have to pay extra to get in to. It was a COSI original film so that was nice since we have seen most of the planetarium shows before. I of course wore my space leggings from LLR, Eric has on his mickey space shirt, and William had on his cats in space shirt. We like to dress for the occasion. LOL And yes, that is Zoey in her Rapunzel pajamas. She refuses to admit they are pajamas and not a princess dress so whatever. She is happy. After the show we were talking with the guy who ran it and he let us go up top and see how everything is ran. The kids always like this part. Don't be scared to ask if you can see this kind of stuff. They often love to let you and often will pull up whatever you want.  

Waiting for the show to start.

After the show we got to ride this balance bike. It was a bike with a huge weight on the bottom and you pedaled it our over the entrance of the museum. We had not worn sneakers but they ones here you could use with those little booties like at show stores. It totally saved my day! So they pedal backwards to get to the end then have to go forward. The faster you go the easier it is. If you go slow you will get stuck, as Ashton learned. They had to call the guy on the ground to get the hook to pull him back in. I can't tell you how hard we laughed! 

All the boys taking their turn. That is where Ashton got stuck. 

I really liked that they had kid sized sinks for the little ones to wash their hands. 

They had a special exhibit that we made it for. It was video games. A whole section just FULL of video games. There were no pictures allowed but my kids could have spent all day in there if I had let them. They had old school arcade games, 3DS stations, computer games, newer arcade games, Play Stations, XBox, Wii, basically any type of video game ever made was there. It was amazing. Outside the game section they had some displays you could take pictures with. 

The brave knight battles the dragon to save the princess

This box had a button that made the coin sound when you hit it. So much fun! 

They had a guy with a tarantula. William and I are the only ones that touched it. 

There was a really cool Ocean area with lots of water play opportunities. The entrance was beautiful Like going into an underwater cavern. They had tubes you could link together to control the flow of water, a water table with sand on an angle to learn about erosion, a mini sub, and more. It was a really neat area for the kids to just PLAY. 

THEY CROSSED THE STREAMS!!!!!

This was fun but some of the tubes we hard to get to stay together.

Such a pretty entrance. 

Our FAVORITE part by far was the Tech Studio. It is only open certain days and I really recommend if you have older kids you go when it is open. It makes this probably the coolest museum we have been to so far. They have an area for a recording studio, computers for MIDI music, 3-D printers that they LET YOU USE, a green screen, vinyl cutters, a laser cutter(they had just got it when we were there), soldering, and SO MUCH more! I mean this place was AMAZING. The staff was great and sat down with William and Eric to show them how to use the 3-D printing software. I texted the hubby and he was very jealous. We could have spent all day in here too. Really, if you are in the area you HAVE to stop by. They offer classes too so check those out if you have the time or live in the area. 

The 3-D printers

Eric made a cup. He was hoping it would be bigger but still SUPER cool. He really learned a lot about how to make a 3-D image and how to remove the middle and things like that. 

William made a cube with a face that protrudes. It was very cool. 

Ashton spent most of his time making music. He had about 5 mins to make a 3-D shape so he made a sphere on a little inner tube type thing. 

Overall this is an AMAZING museum. The parking was a mess. They have a parking area and I paid for parking when we got the tickets for the planetarium. The guy did not give me a ticket though so when I left I had to pay again because it is not staffed and the only ticket I had was the one it gave me when I got there. So that was not cool. That was my only complaint though. It had a lot of original things that we have not seen at other museums and that is a huge plus to us. The kids all agree that it is one of their favorite museums we have been to.