Here are our favorite museums, aquariums, and zoos to experience as a family

Museums

We have a large museum network in our community that my kids love. It offers fantastic, fun learning opportunities that we can enjoy together. My kids love learning about animals and their habitats, force and motion, and so much more each time they visit one of these museums.

The Discovery Place network offers three types of museums:

Discovery Place Science is by far the largest of the Discovery Place museums. This museum has some consistent exhibits such as the ocean life exhibit with a large touch pool and the rainforest exhibit boasting free-flying birds, turtles, and frogs. The museum also offers spaces to explore and experiment with sound, force and motion, building materials, and more. There are frequent live demonstrations and classes available. We also love the informative and engaging IMAX movies. There is so much to see and do at this museum. If you want extra help planning your trip, the museum offers a guide to making the most of your time. There is even a room designated for younger children where they can build with gigantic blocks, splash in a huge water table, or make music with a variety of objects. The museum offers new exhibits frequently which makes it even more exciting to visit the museum on a regular basis.

Discovery Place Nature is a smaller museum that is focused on animals and their habitats. This museum allows kids to see alligators, tarantulas, turtles, and owls up close. There are sweet puppet shows, story times, and live animal encounters. The highlight of this museum for our family is the amazing butterfly garden. If you time it right, there can be dozens of butterflies flying around the space which makes for an incredible experience! This museum is geared more toward younger kids and offers a great play space for littles.

Discovery Place Kids (two locations) is the kind of museum I wish I had had growing up. Set up like a town, kids can learn and play in different businesses around the town. For example, they can help an injured animal in the vet clinic, sound the siren on a fire engine, cook in the restaurant, or change a tire. Kids are able to explore so many different experiences at this museum.

We love the Discovery Place museums so much that we have a family membership to all of the museums. We have definitely been more than enough times to cover the cost of this membership. Some of the perks to membership, other than saving money if you frequent them often enough, are special events and early access to events for members. They also give members discounts on birthday parties. We have had fantastic birthday parties at Discovery Place Nature and Discovery Place Kids. The staff at Discovery Place Kids was amazing and helped the birthday go so smoothly which can be challenging with a bunch of three-year-olds.

Our new favorite find is the Museum of York County . We discovered this museum this summer when we missed the butterfly exhibit at Roper Mountain Science Center (another great destination in Greenville, SC). When I discovered that the Museum of York County had a butterfly exhibit, we decided to check it out. I will be honest that when we first arrived I wasn’t sure there would be much to do as the exterior looks small and unassuming. When we entered the museum, we were so surprised by what we found inside. This museum is the only Smithsonian-style museum in South Carolina and contains more than 2,000 specimens. You can see animals from all over the world from elephants to lions to seals to bats. We were so excited to see animal after animal and read about them as we traveled the museum. The traveling butterfly exhibit was amazing! We went through mazes that required us to read facts about butterflies and make decisions to move us through the maze. It was so much fun! My kids also got to feed butterflies in their small butterfly garden.

Main Street Children’s Museum is located in downtown Rock Hill, SC. This very small museum is geared toward kids 6 and under. The museum is based on the art work of Vernon Grant. There is a make-believe pumpkin house, a tree house, and pirate ship to play in. My kids have a lot of fun exploring the different areas of this museum.

The Children’s Museum of the Upstate is a favorite of ours! The Children’s Museum has two locations, one in Greenville, SC and one in Spartanburg, SC. We have only been to the Greenville location but we have been there several times. It is a lot like the Discovery Place Science and Discovery Place Kids museums. It also hosts amazing traveling exhibits. This museum is a must see!

We also really enjoy the Children’s Museum of the Lowcountry which is set up in a similar way to Discovery Place Kids in that there are rooms to explore different play experiences. They have a pirate ship, a grocery store, a medieval castle, and more.

Aquariums and Zoos

We also love visiting aquariums and zoos. My kids are fascinated by ocean life and animals and we have read so many books about them. It is awesome to see these creatures in person and learn even more about them by reading the informative signs posted throughout. We always learn new facts and have new perspectives after visiting zoos and aquariums.

We love visiting Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, SC. This is such a well-designed zoo that is home to more than 2,000 animals. Last Christmas, my kids received a membership here from their grandparents. This was such an awesome gift! Not only is fun to visit, it also provides so many learning opportunities that extend well beyond our visits. For example, my daughter was fascinated by how the giraffe eats when she got a chance to feed one. That curiosity extended to reading many books about giraffes.

We also love the much smaller but awesome Greenville Zoo in Greenville, SC. Situated in Cleveland Park, the Greenville Zoo has more than 300 animals in their 14-acre facility. My kids really enjoy watching their live web cams too.

Our favorite aquarium is the Georgia Aquarium which is located in Atlanta, GA. This aquarium has more than a hundred thousand animals in 10 million gallons of water. With floor to ceiling glass, you feel like you are surrounded by marine life. Each area is designed to help you fully imagine the habitat. It is a really fun place to visit!

We also enjoy the SeaLife aquariums and we have visited several. There are 53 SeaLife locations around the world. These smaller aquariums share a great deal of information about conservation efforts. The SeaLife aquariums offer many ways for kids to interact with the marine life. My kids love dancing with the jellyfish and touching the starfish in the touch pools.

Another great aquarium is the South Carolina Aquarium in Charleston, SC. This aquarium overlooks the Charleston Harbor and you can often see dolphins swimming down below. One of our favorite aspects of this aquarium is the sea turtle recovery center.