Find out what's on in Illinois and Chicago with your guide to events, festivals, markets, music, theater, sports and more.
Find out how to get to Illinois by plane, train, bus and driving. Getting around Chicago and Illinois is easy with our guide to ways to travel around the state.
Step back in time to the golden age of train travel and settle in for a peaceful ride to discover some of Illinois’ most charming towns and hidden treasures.
Discover opportunities for all-day play, where interactive exhibits encourage kids to engage in a creative environment and learn along the way.
We’ve highlighted some of Illinois’ top destinations, from the Chicago area to Springfield and Edwardsville. Almost a dozen of the statewide children’s museums participate in Museums for All, a program that offers free or reduced admission costs to families receiving SNAP benefits. These museums are denoted with an asterisk.
Most children’s museums cater to kids under the age of 12, with activities for all, including babies and toddlers.
Chicago Children's Museum
Bronzeville Children’s Museum
Wonder Works, A Children’s Museum
Kohl Children's Museum
Below you’ll find destinations within the city of Chicago and its surrounding suburbs.
Chicago’s Outdoor Playground (aka Navy Pier) allows kids to tinker in the lab, build a tree fort and climb Cloud Buster, a highly entertaining multilevel structure. The three-floor Chicago Children’s Museum welcomes families on weekends, Friday through Sunday.
The nation’s first and only African American Children’s Museum calls the South Side of Chicago home. Choose from four tours that cover themes like food and exercise, African American inventors, STEM and local landmarks.
For an out-of-this-world experience, visit the Children’s Museum of Oak Lawn to build a spacecraft, rescue and care for a shelter animal (don’t worry, it’s stuffed), or drive a miniature train through Black Oaks Grove, a re-created town within this exciting museum.
Chicago’s western suburb brings the outside in and the inside out at Wonder Works. Discover bugs and other creatures who call the forest home, then head outside to see real bugs and butterflies in the Children’s Garden. Curious young minds can follow the production journey of a vegetable, which culminates at the Farm Market, where “store owners” sell harvested fruit and veggies.
Spot a turtle (one of the museum’s newest members) or help care for a pet in the vet’s office at the Kohl Children's Museum. More than 15 hands-on activities engage children with creative play, like constructing a house and working with others in the cooperative station.
Test your imagination at the DuPage Children’s Museum, which features exhibits that encourage problem solving through the use of energy, engineering skills and physics. Plus, explore plenty of opportunities for creativity in the art studio.
Exploration Station...A Children’s Museum
Children's Hands-On Museum
Discovery Center Museum
Below you’ll find destinations in Northeast Illinois, but outside of the Chicago suburban area.
At the Exploration Station, children can try their hand at real-world adult jobs like a car mechanic, grocery clerk, restaurant chef, paleontologist and veterinarian, plus a prince or princess, in the Exploralot castle.
Inside the Lincoln Mall, the Children's Hands-On Museum of NW Illinois welcomes kids to make music by banging the drums and shaking maracas. Other exhibits explore science, agriculture and engineering.
A blend of fun and education awaits at the Discovery Center Museum, where children can explore the universe via more than 300 interactive exhibits or head outside to the Rock River Discovery Park to search for dinosaur fossils. There’s also a two-story maze and splash area.
Children’s Discovery Museum
Children’s Museum of Illinois
Children's Museum of Illinois
Kidzeum of Health and Science
Below you’ll find destinations in Central Illinois, including Springfield, Decatur, and Bloomington-Normal.
The Children’s Discovery Museum in the Uptown neighborhood of Normal encourages hands-on activities and boasts the state’s largest agriculture exhibit within a children’s museum. Here, kids can drive a combine, harvest corn and feed cows.
Three floors await exploration at the Children’s Museum of Illinois in Decatur. Get a sense of your senses by learning how an eye works and seeing a giant mouth demonstrate how teeth stay white. Suit up for action in the Heroes Hall, which is dedicated to the men and women in blue.
Whether it’s your body, the community or life on earth, healthy choices lead to a better world. Discover how at the Kidzeum of Health and Science in Springfield.
Edwardsville Children’s Museum
Peoria PlayHouse Children’s Museum
Discovery Depot
Below you’ll find destinations in Western Illinois along the Mississippi River, and as far east as Peoria.
Future first responders, doctors, nurses and veterinarians get hands-on experience at the Edwardsville Children’s Museum. There’s also pizza, custard shops and a post office.
Step back in time at the Peoria PlayHouse Children’s Museum, where the youngsters can unearth fossils from millions of years ago before visiting a town of yesteryear. They can also simulate sailing along the Illinois River as they play with gently flowing water and drive boats downstream.
Stop into Ferris Village at the Discovery Depot — the recreated town, with a handful of stores, allows children to choose to be a customer, businessperson, or creator in the art studio.
The Science Center of Southern Illinois
Below you’ll find the top destination in Southern Illinois.
Designed specifically for children aged 3-13, the Science Center features several interactive hands-on exhibits dealing with a variety of basic concepts of science, as well as special events and programs.
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