Corning Museum Of Glass

This trip to Corning Museum Of Glass was sponsored by TravelingMom.com but the opinions I'm sharing of our trip are my own.

I was honestly a little nervous about taking my four kids to a glass museum. I wondered about how many things they would break before we left and if they would even enjoy themselves. The Corning Museum Of Glass was a pleasant surprise.

The drive to Corning from Rochester is about an hour and a half but the scenery is so beautiful that it goes by pretty quickly. Parking is free and located right by a welcome center. Perfect for a bathroom break for the little ones before starting our visit to the museum.

Entry into the museum is free for kids and teens 19 and younger. I love this! As a homeschooling mom I appreciate the not-for-profit museum's obvious focus on educating and not on money making.

Right after checking in we headed to the studio for our scheduled Make Your Own Glass sessions. To get to the studio we had to walk through the gift shop. That was the only place where I really was concerned that my kids would break something. There are so many beautiful things just begging to be touched! I took away their temptation by telling them to put their hands into their pockets and walking through the shop fast. Very fast.

We all agreed that one of the highlights of our visit was making our own glass projects. When your're only paying for the adults to get into the museum, paying the reasonable fee to make a glass project that you can have forever is a definite must!

I loved that kids of all ages can participate! Staff members told me that if the child can blow out a candle they can do glassblowing. So no one feels left out.

Glassblowing

Making my glass flower

After we finished at the studio we headed back to the museum to explore, starting with the Innovation Center. This is one of those places where kids may think they're playing but their actually learning something. The periscope and the Glass Chemistry Game were a couple of our favorites.

During our visit we made sure to catch a few of the free demos going on including Glass Breaking, Flameworking, and the Hot Glass Show. Our favorite was the glass breaking demo. My boys are already pretty good at breaking glass but in this demo we leaned about how and why glass breaks.

Then we made our way through the galleries. I really enjoyed the the contemporary glass. We were all amazed at the things that the artists made with glass. If you visit, make sure you look closely at Family Matter and keep an eye out for what my kids thought looked like a giant Swedish Fish!

Next, we went into the Glass Collection Galleries. Right next to the entrance to the galleries we found booklets that had kids act as glass detectives and search for animals in the galleries.

These booklets were perfect! The search kept my kids attention while we walked through the galleries and had them really looking at the glass. I was able to enjoy myself and not feel rushed with bored kids.






Just a couple of days after our visit our glass projects came in the mail. The kids were so excited to see their final products! Someone may have said that the flower I made was hideous. I think they were just jealous of my awesome glassmaking skills!

Look at that beautiful flower!

The Corning Museum Of Glass is a place that people of all ages can enjoy and afford. We spent over five hours exploring and there was still things we didn't get to see. I would suggest you plan on making a day of your visit. Take a break for some lunch in the cafe where you can purchase pizza slices and gigantic brownies!

My kids said they liked it better there than at our local children's museum so we'll being visiting again for sure!