The kids and I had another fun local outing today at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center. It’s one of their favorite spots because they love the interactive exhibits. We go pretty often since they update and change the exhibits every few months. The Fleet Science Center is in Balboa Park, along with many other museums just a few steps away.
Today, the place was packed with summer camps and extended school year kids. Fortunately, we're members of this museum, so we could skip the long line and walk right in with our passes to start exploring everything at the Science Center.
We headed straight to the second floor to check out the area with the most changes and found some pretty cool new interactive exhibits. The first one caught my youngest’s attention immediately. It looked like a big sandbox, lit up in different colors like blue, orange, green, and yellow. But the real magic was in how the colors changed with the altitude of the sand. Lowering the sand turned it blue, while raising it turned it orange. Essentially, it was a topographic map that continuously updated thanks to lights and sensors above the sand.
A completely different exhibit caught my oldest's attention: a lit-up hopscotch game in the middle of the room. He noticed that some of the squares would light up periodically, and after reading the instructions, he learned he was supposed to follow the pattern and see what happened. Essentially, when he jumped on the correct square, it would light up; if he jumped on the wrong one, nothing happened. He had a ton of fun with it and probably spent 20 minutes jumping around, trying to light up all the squares.
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Another exhibit near the hopscotch was the "Color Your Shadows" wall. My oldest loved dancing in front of the wall and seeing his shadow appear in different colors. He didn’t try to answer the experimental question of how to make a yellow shadow; he just enjoyed dancing in front of it, which was totally fine with me.
A room they both enjoyed was the monochromatic room. Although, I have to admit, the exhibit there bothered me a bit. It was like a basketball game with three hoops, where you were supposed to shoot the balls into the hoops to separate them by color. Afterward, you could hit a button to turn on the light and reveal the colors. However, there were five different colors of balls and only three spots, so it wasn’t really possible to organize them properly. But that was just a minor gripe of mine. The kids didn’t care at all; they just loved throwing the balls into the hoops and seeing where the colors ended up.
They had a marble run wall where you had to rearrange the pieces to guide a marble through four designated sections. These sections could be rotated but not moved from their spots. My oldest had a great time trying to set it up so the marble would go through all four sections without falling off, and he eventually figured out how to do it.
How the wall started
How it finished
They also had a light peg wall, which I thought the kids would enjoy playing with more. My oldest used it for a bit and made what he called a house. I found it really cool and could have played with it for a long time, but the kids lost interest after just a couple of minutes.
After we finished exploring the second floor, we headed to the bottom floor to an area called Studio X. This area hosts different science crafts each day, and today they were making their own spinners. The kids cut circles out of pre-traced cardboard, then traced and decorated a piece of paper to put on top. The staff then punched a hole in the middle and fixed a skewer through it so they could have a spinner.
At this point, it was starting to get really busy—I’d already counted seven different field trip groups, and some of them were quite large! So after we finished our spinners, we headed toward the entrance and took a quick look at the exhibits there.
We only spent a few minutes here, but we checked out the plasma tube, which the kids really liked and now want one for their rooms. We also saw a centrifuge, which sparked a bit of a rivalry between my two boys—one wanted to stop the spinning, while the other wanted to make it spin as fast as possible. That’s when I realized they were definitely tired, so it was time to exit, grab a snack, and head home.
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As we made our way toward the exit, the kids got distracted by a “How to Complete a Circuit” exhibit. We stopped and took some time to experiment with different ways to complete the circuit, from one kid holding both knobs to two of them holding hands, and even all three of us linking hands to complete the circuit. The lights in the middle would light up when we did, and they had a lot of fun with it. We ended up spending about 10 minutes there before we finally made it to the exit
Outside the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, we had a quick snack by the fountain, but we only lasted a few minutes before heading back to the car because the kids started to get too hot.
Thanks for joining us on our quick trip to the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center! If you’re ever in the area and have kids who enjoy hands-on activities, this is definitely a place I’d recommend visiting, especially if it’s really hot outside. Keep in mind that it can get a bit busy, but overall it’s a great spot where kids can spread out and explore. They also have a section for younger kids, ages 5 and under, to play and work on socialization skills. We didn’t make it up there today because my kids have spent a lot of time there before and weren’t interested this time.