At the craft table, she started to make a school banner based on the Harry Potter books. Undeterred by our building debacle, my granddaughter abandoned science in favor of art. I’m more Flintstone and Rubble than Watson and Crick. Not surprisingly, her structure didn’t end up looking anything like the pictures on the instruction cards we had. She wanted to collect every purple diamond shape in the immediate vicinity. The tower she built never got off the floor. Luckily, my granddaughter wasn’t looking for a science teacher but instead more of a hunting and gathering companion. Incidentally I didn’t know if any of this was true. “Things like electrons and neutrons and protons. “See those giant towers those big kids are making? They actually represent things in science,” I said to my granddaughter. The grandchild I did have was somewhat puzzled about what we were supposed to do. Almost everyone in there could have been my child, except for the 60 or so that could have been my grandchild. It was school vacation week and the place was overrun with toddlers, elementary school kids and moms and dads with babies on their hips. It never occurred to me I’d have to help. I imagined simulated circuit boards and places for kids of all ages to insert colorful pegs into holes, kind of like a communal game of Lite Brite fueled by math and engineering. It sounded like a pretty big step up from Chuck E Cheese where my kids spent way too much of their toddlerhood. Lucky for me, Genius Gems is advertised as an incubator for STEM with coding classes for kids ages 2-12. Two Tuesdays ago, I took my granddaughter to Genius Gems, where there were no actual gems and, as far as I could tell, only one genius ( of course I mean my granddaughter). ![]() For me to sell my granddaughter on the benefits of STEM is like asking a pig to teach mah jongg. And even in my watered-down college bio classes, I never could understand alleles. I’ve never encountered a jigsaw puzzle I haven’t run from. My son has been asking to go again and to bring his baby sister (who luckily is under 2 so free!!)Ĭan’t say enough about this place.Of the four grandparents my granddaughter has, I would probably be the one voted least likely to succeed at fostering a love of STEM. (They sometimes to run promotions with no adult charge.) However you CAN stay over two hours if it’s not crowded, there is an amazing cafe for snacks (and Most importantly- coffee!!), you can bring outside food for lunch, no shoes in play space so everything is clean and plenty of parking. The only thing to note about open play is they charge for child AND adult. Can’t say enough of what a great place to have our 6yr olds birthday there. What amazed me the most was that Jennifer (the owner) herself lead all the party activities while she had only just had a new baby a couple months before. The party space was big and everything was so organized and clean. ![]() Everyone had so much fun and there was even the option to have our guests (small extra cost) to extend their time for open play after our allotted party time. He totally did! We had the most amazing birthday party in the fall! Jennifer and her team was on top of everything- from responding quickly to emails prior to setting up and moving the flow of the party as it was going. We had tried Genius Gems out over the summer for open play to see if my son would want his birthday party there.
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