Oklahoma-City

A nonprofit sailing school on Lake Hefner that runs week-long summer camps for kids, open to non-members with a published non-member rate. The main camp is ages 8 to 15 and covers boat handling, rigging, steering, navigation and water safety in small dinghies, finishing the week with the kids racing each other. There is a separate half-day Pirate Camp for ages 5 to 7 that is really a water-confidence and intro-to-boats program designed to feed the full camp later. Need-based scholarships run through partnerships with the Boys and Girls Club and Big Brothers Big Sisters. Camps fill early and several sessions sell out each summer.

A much bigger and better museum than the name suggests, built around Western art, rodeo history and a full-scale indoor frontier town called Prosperity Junction that kids can walk through street by street. There is a childrens cowboy corral with dress-up gear, a stagecoach and a barn area. Galleries cover Native American art, firearms, and the reality of ranch work versus the movie version. The End of the Trail sculpture in the entry hall is enormous. Half a day and it sits right next to Science Museum Oklahoma.

The draw for kids here is the Dale Chihuly glass collection, one of the largest anywhere, including a fifty-five foot glass tower in the atrium that looks like frozen fireworks. The rest of the museum is a manageable size with American and European painting and rotating exhibitions. Family art activities and drop-in studio days run on select weekends. A film theater on site screens independent and family films. An hour and a half covers it, and the Chihuly tower alone is worth walking in for.

A large state history museum across from the Capitol with five galleries covering everything from the land runs and the Dust Bowl to Oklahoma aviation and the space program. Hanging aircraft, a full oil derrick and a Route 66 section give kids big physical things to look at rather than pure text. The Dust Bowl exhibit with recorded accounts lands hard with older kids. There is an outdoor Red River Journey trail for when the weather cooperates. Two to three hours and rarely crowded.

A huge hands-on science museum with hundreds of exhibits, a planetarium and a high-wire bicycle you ride across a cable above the main hall. Tinkering Garage lets kids build with real tools and materials, and CurioCity is a whole floor of physics and body science stations. Live science demonstrations with explosions and liquid nitrogen run through the day. There is a dedicated area for the under-fives and a small aviation hall with real aircraft. This is a full day and the single best indoor destination in Oklahoma.