Children often visit museums with their parents to help them grow, learn and broaden their horizons. But few museums can capture a kid's attention in the way that only play can. The KL!ck Children's Museum in Hamburg, for example, invites children to play and learn at the same time.
The halls of KL!ck house a number of diverse exhibitions. Children can visit all of them or just one. For example, a familiar game for children — building with a construction set. Thousands of Lego bricks are at the children's disposal to build small houses or huge palaces. When the weather is nice, the construction is taken outside and the plastic bricks are replaced by almost real ones that have to be glued together with mortar.
How did people live when they couldn't build houses? On the lawn in front of the museum there is a Stone Age course. Here children will try to make a stone axe or spear, make fire with friction, find their own food and build a hut out of branches.
We recommend visiting Hagenbeck Zoo, which is only 8 km away.
In the next room, the game is more complicated: a bank prints money that can be used in a shop. Some will be challenged to become bankers, others will be fascinated by an antique cash register, and others will become rich through clever investments. As they play, children learn how money has replaced barter and how plastic cards have replaced cash.
Next to the game rooms is a dentist's office. The only difference is that it's not the doctors who see the patients, but the children. In the anatomy exhibition, children can not only count their teeth, but also get to know the structure of the human body and even return to their mother's womb for a while.
The girls at Hamburg's KL!ck Museum are usually interested in the Household Department. There are old household items, from washing boards to heavy irons. You can go milk shopping with an aluminium can or try to turn the handle of a meat grinder. Even children who don't do much housework will realise how much harder it is to run a household without an automatic washing machine or multi-cooker. But when they get tired of the chores, young visitors to the museum will be happy to play with old toys or snuggle up on a shabby sofa and look at a picture book.
The Children's Museum also has temporary exhibitions on a wide range of topics, from the history of pasta making to a tour of the insect world. One day a week is also reserved for children's birthday parties. Good news for parents: the young-at-heart can also take part in games and experiments.
