Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose

Specs
Type:	Museum
Distance:	Weekend Trip
Area:	San Jose
Ages:	All Ages
Cost:	$
Information:	www.cdm.org

My kids call this "The Clifford Place," because of its most memorable exhibit: an entire room devoted to that beloved book and TV show about a freakishly large, primary-colored dog. The Clifford exhibit is laid out like a little village, complete with a restaurant where kids can serve up fish and chips, a post office and a theater that plays non-stop episodes of Clifford the Big Red Dog.

There is a ton of stuff at the Discovery Museum besides just a room full of Clifford memorabilia--there's also a miniature city with an ambulance and fire truck that your kids can explore, a room where they can make giant bubbles, the partial skeleton of a mammoth on display and a big room called WaterWays, where kids can send colorful plastic balls along a system channels, pulleys and tunnels, over waterfalls and up water spouts.

For the artistically-inclined, there's a room where kids can paint on the walls, an "Art Loft" where kids will get hands-on instruction in arts and crafts as well as a craft station where they can make corn husk dolls.

It will cost just under $50 for a family of four to visit the museum, but there's plenty there to keep you all occupied for most of a day.  I took all four of my kids to this museum solo when the littlest was only two, and somehow managed to keep track of all of them. The museum has so many activities and fun things to do that even over-excitable little ones aren't going to be inclined to wander off.