Museum Mania

Looking for summer activities you can do with your kids?

Venture off the island and head to Fort Myers for fun and learning. Lee County has launched an attractions program that offers discounts to four venues: the Calusa Nature Center and Planetarium, the Edison & Ford Winter Estates, the Imaginarium Hands-on Museum and the Southwest Florida Museum of History.

The SWFL Museum of History organized the program, called Museum Mania, and asked the other three to join them. Their objective is to increase awareness and encourage visitation to these educational resources. Each of the galleries celebrates the pioneers, history, nature and science of Southwest Florida.

Adults and children alike will enjoy these distinctive exhibitions.

Museum Mania provides a pocket "passport" — a booklet that describes each destination highlighted with color photographs. Four coupons for $1 off the entrance fee for each museum are inserted in the passport. On the back of each discount coupon, participants are asked to write their name, address and phone number: Each of the coupons will be entered into a grand prize drawing Sept. 5, 2006, where winners will be announced. Passports can be obtained at each museum, as well as several hotels and motels in Fort Myers. (You can find out the distribution locations by visiting www.cityftmyers.com/museum.)

Designed as a souvenir for visitors, the booklet's front cover displays "Official Passport" in capital letters, while the back cover of the passport has a designated box for each attraction to apply its signature ink stamp (at Calusa Nature Center, I got to choose between a frog and a dragonfly). Kids enjoy this feature because it's just like presenting an international passport to be stamped and validated.

Contact information and addresses are provided in the pamphlet. Travel time between the four locations is minimal. At the farthest distance, the museums are all within four miles of each other. Depending on the age and energy of your children, you can easily visit two of these venues in one day — although you may want to spread them out to prevent the kids' summertime blues. (When the children whine, "Mom, I don't have anything to doooo.")

Just the name, the Southwest Florida Museum of History, may turn kids off, but when they discover that it occupies a former Atlantic Coastline Railroad depot and contains a 1929 private Pullman rail car, children may start humming another tune. A 1926 La France fire pumper is also housed there. And if they're interested in Indians, there is plenty to see — exhibits on the Paleo, Calusa and Seminole Indians, as well as Spanish explorers will capture young ones' attentions.

If animals are popular in your family, especially of the slimy, ugly or creepy-crawly category, the Calusa Nature Center & Planetarium has them. Snakes, lizards, baby and adult alligators, a giant toad and a tarantula (among others) are on exhibit up close and personal. A butterfly aviary is a peaceful contrast to these creatures, as well as a bird and mammal aviary that includes, for example, a bald eagle, a bobcat, horned owls and an albino raccoon (all white, with pink eyes, nose, feet — it took me a minute to realize it was a raccoon).

The aviaries and indoor animal exhibits are rather small; nonetheless, there is plenty to keep the younger ones curious. A whale's enormous jawbone and vertebrae greet you as you approach the center's entrance.

Daily learning programs are offered, including "Live Animal Presentation" at 1 p.m., "Planetarium Show" at 2 p.m. and "Meet the Mammals" at 3 p.m. The planetarium show changes weekly, focusing on specific topics, such as Florida's summer sky and what you can see and the Hubble Space Telescope.

Adults will certainly enjoy the Edison & Ford winter estates — the botanical garden contains more than 1,000 varieties of plants; and the famous retreats, on the banks of the Caloosahatchee River, have been left untouched, demonstrating the architecture and furnishings of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

The whole family will take pleasure in the museum and Thomas Edison's laboratory. Inventions galore are displayed, including more than 200 phonographs, a prototype Model T Ford (given to Edison by friend Henry Ford), an electric pen, heaters, fans and numerous odd-looking but functional kitchen appliances such as the "Siphonator," the "grandfather of coffeemakers."

Florida residents receive an additional discount.

"Hands-on" is the key to the Imaginarium Museum. More than 60 interactive exhibits provide fun and education for parents and kids. You can join a dinosaur dig, test the hurricane simulator and examine a living coral reef and alligator lagoon. The Imaginarium also has a 3-D movie theater, wild animal exhibits and food services to replenish energy for the next action attraction.

If you've visited large science museums in New York or other cities, prepare for a downsized, downscaled experience. The kids still have tons of fun, but adult expectations may be disappointed.