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| | California | Los Angeles | |||
| Park La Brea - Museums | |||
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La Brea Tar Pits and Page Museum – If there's one museum you should see with your kids, it's the La Brea Tar Pits. Here you are in the middle of Los Angeles, standing in the bright sunshine staring at these bubbling, blurpy pools of oozing black tar. 40,000 to 10,000 years ago, the local inhabitants, which included wooley mammoths, saber tooth tigers, wolves, ground sloths, got stuck in the goo. The result was Ice Age fossils perfectly preserved in the tar. | |
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Before you go inside the museum, check out the tar pits. Endlessly fascinating. You can't miss them. There are several replicas of Ice Age animals, thoughtfully stuck in the pits to give you an idea of what happened thousands of years ago. Picnic tables are situated with a good view of the tar pits. | ||
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The Page Museum is a treasure trove, filled with skeletons of saber tooth tigers, bison, ground sloths, mastodons, eagles, California condors and over 400 Dire wolf skulls. An animatronic wooley mammoth roars realistically, another animatronic saber tooth tiger attacks a ground sloth. More about dinosaurs in a 20 min. film in the Dinosaur Theater. |
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Just recently, a Columbian mammoth, nickname "Zed," was uncovered in a construction site near the museum. In the Paleontology lab, you can watch researchers patiently cleaning the fossilized mammoth skeleton and beautifully preserved tusks. |
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Los Angeles County Museum – Next to the Tar Pits is the Los Angeles County Museum. The collections and size of the museum are quite accessible for kids. In the American Art galleries, look for Mary Cassatt's homey painting of a Mother About to Wash Her Sleepy Child, and John Singer Sargent's portrait of an elegant mom, one hand on her hip, the other casually clasping her son's hand. For the fashion-minded, check out the Venetian silks, French dresses, Chinese capes, and chic clothing for kids 18th - 20th centuries. Outside the museum, there are sturdy Rodin bronze sculptures. Every Sunday there are family tours and workshops for kids under 12. | ||
| At LACMA West – Every Sunday is family day. There is music, art workshops and live performances. Check out the hands-on environment in the Boone Children's Gallery. Behind the gallery is a grassy area and picnic tables. | |||
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Petersen Automotive Museum – Cars, cars, cars galore. What you would expect from a city that lives on its freeways? The Petersen car museum is stuffed to the gills with exceptional cars, from the earliest Model A's, to the "muscle" cars of the 1950's, cars with big fins, dream cars, hot rods, coupes and Cadillacs. In the May Family Discovery Center on the third floor, little kids can hop on a motorcycle, sit in the driver's seat of an old-fashioned roadster, or play with toy cars on the floor. There are hands-on exhibits (try powering a car under your own steam) and intriguing displays, such as the raw ingredients of a car (copper, brass, rubber, glass, plastic, leather and wood.) The museum gift shop has lots of model cars. Tip: The Petersen Automotive Museum is free with the Go Los Angeles Card. |
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Craft and Folk Art Museum – This small, charming museum has exotic jewelry from India, Nagaland and Morocco, beaded bags from the Middle East, colorful ikat robes from Central Asia, and Tibetan rugs woven in designs of fantastic creatures. | ||
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Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust – Older kids will get a great deal out of this museum that focuses on the Jewish experience in concentration camps. In the first exhibits are poignant mementos of Jewish life in Europe before World War II, black and white photos of families and religious treasures. Walk through a life-size replica of a railroad transport car and take a close look at a detailed model of the Sobidor concentration camp. |
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Fun food – |
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Close to the museums, stop into the Farmers Market (at 3rd and Fairfax), popular with local families since the 1930's. There's a wide variety of restaurants and casual eats for breakfast, lunch or dinner – hot dogs, crepes, burritos, Chinese, barbeque, hamburgers, sushi, sandwiches, fish and chips, pizza, pastries, pies, doughnuts, ice cream, smoothies, local root beer and lemonade. |
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| More children's books on other Los Angeles pages | ||||||
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