The Staten Island Children's Museum is on a beautiful historic site in Staten Island called Snug Harbor. I has a beautiful grassy field surrounding the historic building with a giant green grasshopper sculpture and nestled behind the museum is a nautical themed playground .
As compared to the Brooklyn Children's Museum, which focused on the diversity of cultural neighborhoods, Staten Island Children's Museum has more of a world view. After the giant game pieces and interactive firetruck there are accouterments to venture into the Antarctic, dive into the ocean depths, and explore the jungle. There is more of a focus on exploring the unknown than understanding the familiar world around us. The excitement of being an explorer in a foreign world is quite different than learning how they make bread in a Mexican panderia. One is not necessarily better than the other, merely different.
On the third floor there is a construction zone where children can handle tools and see a building at different stages of completion and a bug section. The bug section seems to be real crowd pleaser among the younger set. Perhaps its because there is a similarity to a zoo in the exhibits with scary tarantulas on view behind glass and guinea pigs in their 'natural' environment. There is a similar exhibit at Brooklyn Children's Museum and I can only garner its because of the ease and economy of caring for arachnids is much easier than monkeys or other wild animals. Nevertheless it seems to be a real high point for kids to get nose to nose with roaches, spiders, and butterflies.
In general, I prefer this museum over the one in Brooklyn for its wide open spaces and relatively unsophisticated point of view. The Brooklyn Museum seems to shout, 'look at me! I'm politically correct! I respect all local cultures!' There is nothing wrong with that but the simplistic viewpoint in Staten Island is far more enjoyable.
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