If you’ve been following me on Instagram, then you”ll know that I’ve been simply swamping my feed with photos of all the fun we had at Giria’s Explorium.
What is Giria’s Explorium?
If you are a parent of a young kid/toddler, this is the hottest hangout in town. It’s a fairly new place but because of the lack of decent entertainment for young children in Bangalore, all us young moms have pretty much made this place our headquarters ever since it opened.
Basically, it is a gargantuan three-storey play area for kids. But with a difference. Unlike the soft play areas like Funky Monkey and the like, the explorium aims to challenge the body and the mind with their in-house activities.
So, if you are a rather mechanically inclined kid like for example, the Piglet, there is a digger, and a crane, where you can actually climb onto them and move the controls to transport bricks or sand from one point to another. Or you can learn all about dams and how they work while at the same time splashing in water and having fun. Or even try pretending to be a plumber!
Piglet had a blast at these centers.
The first time we came here, it was because Piglet’s friend was hosting his birthday party there. Long past the party was over, Piglet and his friends hung around having fun. We spent almost half a day there!
Snubnose missed this party because the timing clashed with her friend’s party (LOL! we party a lot, right?). When we came home raving to her about all the fun we had, she turned an interesting shade of green, and insisted that we need to take her the very next weekend.
So, that’s what we did.
The very next weekend, we came back with Snubnose, Piglet, and our nephew and proceeded to spend another five hours there.
I honestly thought Piglet would be bored coming back so soon to the same place. But he wasn’t. He simply found another set of activities to keep him occupied.
This time, with his sister to help him get through the tough climbing parts, he dared to enter the huge spaceship that extends across all three floors of the explorium. He had to climb quite a bit and the spaceship intrigued our normally timid Piglet to climb up to quite a height.
He even sat on the gravity chair in the spaceship experiencing what it feels like for an astronaut when a spaceship is launching him into outer space.
Snubnose had a pretty good time as well. There were art centers where you can paint on glass, a sand center where you can create art work by dribbling sand through a funnel, and of course her favorite – cooking and shopping centers 😉 .
The only person who didn’t have a blast was my nephew. The poor guy was a bit too old to enjoy these activities (he is fifteen). He came along only because Snubnose pleaded with him to come, but once they were there she rushed off to the cooking center leaving him all alone.
He did try to occupy himself by playing with Piglet but his presence reminded me that this period when you can indulge in such childish activities is very short. Who knows, Snubnose might outgrow playzones within the next year. This is a good reminder to me not to greet Snubnose’s enthusiasms with moans and groans, because soon all this precious time with her will be gone, only to be replaced with demands for “me time”.
I just hope that stage is later rather than sooner.
Details About Giria’s Explorium
Address:
Amarjyoti Layout, Bengaluru, Karnataka
Phone:080 4168 1858
The rate is Rs.750/- per kid for the entire day (they don’t have an hourly rate), and Rs.250/- per adult.
Note: This place is not really a child-care kind of place where you drop your kids off for a couple of hours while you run errands. They have staff to monitor but I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving my kids alone. The staff also recommend that parents accompany their children and have fun with them.
