Finding family fun this summer in Topeka doesn’t have to be expensive! Topeka has a bevy of free activities that it offers during the summer to keep your kids active, learning and even eating nutritional meals. In this blog, you’ll find a wide assortment of different no-cost activities.
The Kansas Children’s Discovery Center will be open for special holiday hours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Memorial Day, May 30, 2022, to celebrate the final day of its Tiny Titans: Dinosaur Eggs and Babies exhibit. This will be your last chance to experience the exhibit before it is packed up and shipped out.
This remarkable, hands-on exhibition offers an astounding array of authentic dinosaur eggs and nests collected from all across the globe, in addition to great hands-on play experiences! Kids can dig for eggs, dress up like a parent dinosaur to brood their nest and feel the texture of dinosaur eggs. Cute babies and fun dinosaur facts will keep the whole family playing and learning.
Regular admission applies, which is $9 for children and adults, $8 for seniors and free for infants under 12 months and Discovery Center members. Admission also lets you play all day at the Kansas Children’s Discovery Center, with more than 15,000 square feet of indoor educational exhibits exploring science, careers, art, building and more, plus a 4.5-acre certified Nature Explore Outdoor Classroom.
Tiny Titans is part of Topeka Dino Days, a communitywide dinosaur exhibition that includes Dinosaurs Alive at the nearby Topeka Zoo (open through June 30) and Sue: The T-Rex Experience at the Great Overland Station (now closed). It also includes the Topeka Dino Days Base Camp at the Topeka Visitors Center, which closes on Memorial Day, as well.
The exhibit has been a great attraction for the Discovery Center, and was vital in helping attract a record single-day attendance of 1,152 visitors on March 17, 2022, during Topeka’s spring break week.
Tiny Titans is generously sponsored by the Topeka Lodging Association and Visit Topeka.
RELATED: Find out about the different families of dinosaurs on display at the Discovery Center here.
The Kansas Children’s Discovery Center is throwing a little shade at its guests in 2022.
That’s because the Discovery Center on Friday, May 13, unveiled a new, scaly roof on its Reptilian Pavilion that offers a cool place to play during the summer. The project began in 2020, with students from the University of Kansas School of Architecture and Design starting to design the pavilion. Construction began during spring 2021 with the base structure, and was then completed this spring by eight KU architecture students and presented to the public during an informal open house.
The student volunteers originally planned to use terra cotta tiles for the roof, according to KU associate professor Keith Van de Riet, but decided to instead go with recycled, aluminum traffic signs that were shaped to look like scales by the students. Van de Riet oversaw the project, as well as the New Years Pavilion that was constructed by another group of KU architecture students and unveiled in February 2022.
The Kansas Children’s Discovery Center got a helping hand from a great group of volunteers from Washburn University recently.
Students from Washburn volunteered this past weekend at the Kansas Children’s Discovery Center as part of Washburn’s Big Event, a university-wide volunteer day.
The students arrived at the Discovery Center on the morning of Saturday, April 30, and cleaned and cleared out paths in the Discovery Center’s Certified “Nature Explore” Outdoor Classroom.
This year marked the 10th anniversary of the Big Event, which in 2011 merged with a similar project called “Bods in the Street” that began in 1995.
The Kansas Children’s Discovery Center offers high-quality, interactive experiences to inspire a lifelong love of learning for every child. Volunteers support our mission by creating these memorable experiences for every family that walks through our doors. Volunteers engage children in fun, educational activities, pitch in at special events, maintain our outdoor space and keep exhibit areas ready for play. If your organization is interested in a fun volunteer day at the Kansas Children’s Discovery Center, call our volunteer coordinator at (785) 783-8300. We have indoor and outdoor projects for any size group.
Thank you, Washburn University students!
MORE VOLUNTEER NEWS: Read more about future educators from TCALC volunteering their time here.
The Kansas Children’s Discovery Center got a helping hand from a great group of volunteers from the Evergy Green Team on Tuesday, March 29.
The volunteers spent several hours cutting down problematic trees, laying mulch at the Chinese New Years Pavilion and dragon sculpture, clearing excessive brush and removing rocks, wood beams and other debris to make the Discovery Center’s Certified “Nature Explore” Outdoor Classroom a safe, visually appealing area for children and their families to learn, grow and play.
Evergy has been a big supporter of the Kansas Children’s Discovery Center for many years. It provided considerable funding and volunteers for a project that involved making the Discovery Center’s pond and stream more interactive and safe, helped oversee a recent prescribed burn of the Discovery Center’s prairie restoration habitat, constructed the Discovery Center’s original Epic Sandbox in 2017 and has donated to help fund many of the Discovery Center’s great educational programs.
The Green Team itself is a group of employees and retiree volunteers that has taken on environmental projects across Kansas and Missouri since 1989. The team completes 50 to 70 projects per year, mostly on weekends and evenings, according to its website. The Green Team collaborates with conservation groups, agencies and schools in enhancing and fostering an understanding of the Kansas and Missouri environment, as well as improving natural habitats and helping provide access to important environmental areas.
Kansas Children’s Discovery Center offers high-quality, interactive experiences to inspire a lifelong love of learning for every child. Volunteers support our mission by creating these memorable experiences for every family that walks through our doors. Volunteers engage children in fun, educational activities, pitch in at special events, maintain our outdoor space and keep exhibit areas ready for play. If your organization is interested in a fun volunteer day at the Kansas Children’s Discovery Center, call our volunteer coordinator at (785) 783-8300. We have indoor and outdoor projects for any size group.
Thank you, Evergy Green Team!
MORE VOLUNTEER NEWS: Read more about future educators from TCALC volunteering their time here.
The Kansas Children’s Discovery Center’s Amazing Air exhibit is reopening to the public better than ever!
The air exhibit features three separate machines that use the power of wind to push objects and defy gravity, creating a fun and educational station for children to learn about a force of nature that isn’t visible to the naked eye.
One of the features is a new, bigger Bernoulli Blower, which was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services*. This machine showcases Bernoulli’s Principle, which states that fast-moving fluids or air, such as strong winds, have lower pressure than slow-moving air. Using this principle, blowers on the machine keep beach balls aloft against the pull of gravity. This is similar to how airplanes create lift, with the faster-moving air above the wing creating lower pressure than the slower-moving air below the wing, pushing the aircraft up.
The Air Maze uses the power of air to push objects through a labyrinth of tubes. The direction the object travels is directed by flipping switches along the maze that divert the airflow in different directions. The objects then fly out of one of three openings, depending on how the switches are configured.
The Tornado Tube creates a vortex of wind and allows children to see the spinning motion of the wind by placing objects inside and seeing how they move within the tube. This is similar to the type of vortex that you see when tornadoes or hurricanes occur in nature. A vortex is a physics phenomenon that occurs when a gas or a liquid moves in circles. At the center is a vortex line that the matter swirls around.
The Kansas Children’s Discovery Center is a hands-on children’s museum with a mission to enhance the lives of children and enrich the communities it serves. Since opening in 2011 in Topeka, Kansas, the Discovery Center has become a special place where children can explore, create, discover and learn through play. The museum features more than 15,000 square feet of indoor exhibits and a 4.5-acre certified Nature Explore Outdoor Classroom. Outreach programs bring quality, hands-on experiences into our community to inspire a lifelong love of learning for every child. More than 600,000 visitors from 23 countries have visited The Kansas Children’s Discovery Center.
*The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s libraries and museums. To learn more, visit www.imls.gov and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
It’s been just over a month since Tiny Titans: Dinosaur Eggs and Babies opened at the Kansas Children’s Discovery Center, and the response has been terrific!
Along with the exhibit, which is located in the multimedia gallery, several new dino-themed features were added to the main floor of the Discovery Center, as well. One of those additions – a long, wooden table with a built-in landscape and a painted mural as the background – was created by a pair of employees with a flair for artistic expression.
Maya Beyer, a part-time gallery assistant and student at Johnson County Community College, teamed up with Draque Carver, who has worked for the Discovery Center since 2014 as the exhibit and facilities maintenance manager, to create the popular attraction.
Beyer was commissioned by the Discovery Center to paint the mural, a process that took between 16 and 20 hours to complete. Carver then created the table out of wood and built a colorful landscape for the dinosaur toys to stomp around on.
“I was so thrilled when KCDC asked me to paint for them,” Beyer said. “It’s an honor to have my work featured in the museum. My mural is a landscape that guests can interact with.”
According to Dr. Rachel E. White, playing with objects such as toy dinosaurs gives children a chance to practice both fine and gross motor skills, depending on the size of the objects. It also contributes to cognitive development, including learning about the nature of objects, problem-solving, creativity and foundational skills for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
The table is located near the art pavilion at the back of the Discovery Center.
Tiny Titans: Dinosaur Eggs and Babies, open until May 30, 2022, at the Kansas Children’s Discovery Center, is an interactive exhibition that offers an astounding array of authentic dinosaur eggs and nests collected from all across the globe, in addition to great hands-on play experiences! Kids can dig for eggs, dress up like a parent dinosaur to brood their nest, and feel the texture of dinosaur eggs. Cute babies and fun dinosaur facts will keep the whole family playing and learning. The exhibit is divided into four sections based on the different families of dinosaurs: Ceratopsians, Sauropods, Theropods and Ornithopods. Each space provides visitors with a bevy of interesting information and activities about that particular type of dinosaur.
The Kansas Children’s Discovery Center announced today the museum set a single-day attendance record on Thursday, March 17, 2022, with a total of 1,152 visitors. The previous single-day attendance record was set on June 20, 2019.
A number of factors contributed to the record-breaking attendance. The museum is one of the three major Topeka Dino Days venues and is hosting the Tiny Titans: Dinosaur Eggs and Babies exhibition from Feb. 24 to May 30, 2022. Tiny Titans is sponsored by Visit Topeka and the Topeka Lodging Association and has been a major attraction for regional spring break visitors. Tiny Titans is a hands-on exhibition offering an array of authentic dinosaur eggs and nests collected from all across the globe, in addition to interactive play experiences.
Tiny Titans: Dinosaur Eggs and Babies, open until May 30, 2022, at the Kansas Children’s Discovery Center, is an interactive exhibition that offers an astounding array of authentic dinosaur eggs and nests collected from all across the globe, in addition to great hands-on play experiences! Kids can dig for eggs, dress up like a parent dinosaur to brood their nest, and feel the texture of dinosaur eggs. Cute babies and fun dinosaur facts will keep the whole family playing and learning. The exhibit is divided into four sections based on the different families of dinosaurs: Ceratopsians, Sauropods, Theropods and Ornithopods. Each space provides visitors with a bevy of interesting information and activities about that particular type of dinosaur.
Sauropod (SAWR-o-pod) means “Lizard Footed” and is made up of a herbivorous group of long-necked dinosaurs that had small heads with a small brain and long tail.
• Sauropods were the physically largest group of dinosaurs.
• Sauropods were probably precocial — meaning they were ready to fend for themselves when they hatched. There are a few likely reasons for this: parents were enormous compared to their babies and it would have been hard for parents to see them.
• Tracks show juveniles were half-grown before they joined the herd.
• Dig for Sauropod eggs in a Dino Dig pit.
• See real fossilized Sauropod eggs.
• See and touch egg structure models of Sauropod eggs and see how the baby dinosaurs fit inside the eggs.
• See a magnified view of Titanosaur embryo skin.
• See a magnified view of a Sauropod eggshell.
• Compare dinosaur eggs to modern bird eggs, such as chicken, ostrich and hummingbird eggs.
• Some Sauropod eggs, like those found in the Patagonian Desert, had thick shells, while other Sauropod eggs found in France, Argentina and India had thin shells. The exhibit shows eggs of varying shapes and sizes. When children compare and contrast they are learning to observe, classify and describe objects — all critical skills for learning science and math.
• The exhibit’s touchable fossil replicas and dig pits let children use their sense of touch to explore. Sensory play that lets children touch, squeeze, smell and feel helps build connections in the brain.
• Which came first: the dinosaur or the egg? Find out at Tiny Titans!
• Sauropods grew to huge sizes during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. One species, the Argentinosaurus, grew up to 130 feet in length and is considered the longest and heaviest land animal of all time.
• Sauropods have been found on every continent, including Antarctica.
Tiny Titans: Dinosaur Eggs and Babies is a traveling exhibit series created by Silver Plume Exhibitions and featuring artwork from Luis V. Rey and Mark Hallet, as well as stunning photography by Louie Pshioyos. The exhibit is generously sponsored locally by the Topeka Lodging Association and Visit Topeka, Inc. Tiny Titans will be on display at the Kansas Children’s Discovery Center from February 24 to May 30, 2022, and is included in regular admission.
MORE DINO INFO: Find out more about the Theropods here.
