SAN JOSE — Kids whose bedtime comes well before midnight got to ring in the New Year hours early at the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose — and play and learn in an expansive new outdoor play-and-education area.
While the museum’s three daily ball drops recalling the big event in New York City’s Times Square drew hordes of excited children and parents, many attendees spent considerable time enjoying “Bill’s Backyard” — just opened in October — where a variety of activity sites and a prolific vegetable garden surround three giant-trunked fake trees with walk- and crawl-ways in between.
“We’re building the world’s greatest campfire,” said Sara Davis, 60, of San Jose, whose grandson Judah, 3, was clearly doing the bulk of the work, beneath a shelter made with sticks supplied for kids to learn about building with natural materials.
Nearby, industrious youngsters were using pie pans, muffin tins and other kitchen implements to shuttle tiny rocks around a gravel pit, which features a push-button stream that’s designed to emit only a trickle.
“We decided that we needed to do our part in drought education,” said the museum’s executive director, Marilee Jennings.
Inside, families gathered around educational-activity stations, parents minding busy children. Among the most popular attractions Saturday were the “pin screen” that allows children to form the imprint of their hands, and other body parts, by pushing against a panel of closely spaced long, plastic rods, plus a room full of water games, including a fountain that shot plastic balls into the air and a whirlpool in a trash can-sized see-through drum.
In the “Mammoth Discovery” room, Mariam Ruhi, 5, was using a small brush to clear sawdust from a replica fossil bed. “She could do this all day,” said her mother Syeda Ruhi, 36. The Cupertino family visits the museum two or three times a year, Ruhi said, but they made a point of coming on New Year’s Eve for the ball drop. “This is special,” she said.
A different kind of educational activity drew 6-year-old Yinon Elmaliach, who was entranced by the three-inch plastic discs spinning in place on a circular metal surface that was also rotating quickly. “The circle stuff can spin without moving!” the Foster City boy reported.
As always at the museum’s annual New Year’s Eve event — first launched in 2006 — the ball drops saw the main hall packed with people awaiting the ball’s descent, which took place at 1 p.m., 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. On the hour, confetti in every color of the spectrum was shot out over the crowd, which numbered around 1,000 for the first drop. The ball, designed and made in-house, came down slowly, to the cheers of children and adults. No cliche glitter-ball this — the museum’s version is bedecked with dozens of LED lights, radiating psychedelic patterns as the globe falls.
“You can feel the New Year, you can feel that 2018’s coming,” said Djie Zhou, 33, who watched from a staircase with her three-year-old son Rhett as the ball descended.
The three ball drops coincide with time zones around the world, highlighting the diversity of the communities the museum serves, Jennings said. “It just shows a real-time reflection of our Silicon Valley environment,” Jennings said.
However, among the more than 2,400 attendees were visitors who arrived from farther afield. Keshyla Mayberry drove for 2 1/2 hours with her son, daughter and brother from their Fresno home to participate in the festivities. “We’re just having a family New Year’s Eve trip,” Mayberry said.
The group had just arrived, after a stop at the Gilroy Gardens theme park, and Mayberry’s daughter Jazzlyn Phillips, 9, said she was looking forward to fossil and geology displays. “I have a rock collection back home,” she said. “I like to look for dinosaur bones.”
