"Kid museum" was oxymoronic when I grew up. Museums didn't want kids and kids dreaded them. The new age of museums, however, has gone from shush-up and touch-not to hands-on and squeals of delight, breeding a whole new generation of enthusiastic museum-going types.

Florida meets kids' curiosity with museums, aquariums and other interactive centers that open a world of new opportunities for the wide-eyed set: Captain a cruise ship, pet a stingray, make a Japanese fish kite, sink eye-level to a fish or fly to Mars. Your museum admission ticket is your family's magic carpet to anywhere.


IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

When my son, Aaron, was in pre-school, we sought out the smaller kids' museums, where we could sit or walk a spell, examine and play without being distracted by what kids were doing at other exhibits. One of our favorites was Junior Museum of Bay County in Panama City, toddler-doable but wide in appeal.

Aaron liked best the outdoor component, where authentic historic buildings form a 19th-century Pioneer Homestead village, complete with farm tools, home furnishings and audio that paints a picture of frontier life. And what little boy could resist the 1943 railroad engine or a nature boardwalk into cypress forest crawling with skinks, box turtles and flying squirrels?

In Lakeland, teachers designed Explorations V to familiarize young children with their immediate environment and its place in the world. Simple toys demonstrate the fields of art, finance, health and daily life - from school to the theater and grocery store. Downstairs, kids receive a passport to visit exotic cultures and practice their lifestyles. They can learn Australian words, make a Nigerian doll, weave a Native American blanket and use a Chinese abacus.

At the Schoolhouse Children's Museum in Boynton Beach, replicated buildings including a train station, post office, hotel and farmhouse give youngsters the opportunity to dress up, role play and learn. The museum itself occupies a circa-1913 school.


HIGH-TECH FUN

The sinkhole that swallowed a Porsche dealership, a 75-mph hurricane and a recipe for Key Largo Limestone Pie: Museum of Science & Industry (MOSI) introduces visitors to what's rare and fascinating about Florida. The three-floor main museum takes you from down-under caves to sky-high space with models, interactive experiments, a planetarium and an IMAX Dome Theatre.

MOSI's Kids In Charge! opened in 2005 as the largest children's science center in the country. Four exhibit areas challenge kids and inspire them to learn - from tiny tots in The Busy Box to scientific minds in the Activate! and Investigate! areas. Lie on a bed of nails, play giant chess and serve your own head on a platter.

At two other Florida metropolitan hands-on museums, innovation also dazzles. Hear manatees sing and fly through a World War II Navy hangar at Museum of Science and History (MOSH) in Jacksonville. Toddlers can escape into their own world at Kidspace with its tree house centerpiece.

At Fort Lauderdale's Museum of Discovery & Science, Florida EcoScapes recreates several realms of local habitat indoors. Its IMAX theater is 3-D. Kids love the space travel simulator, virtual volleyball and the musical kaleidoscope.


REACHING FOR CLOUDS & STARS

Those mysterious men and their flying machines! More than 130 military aircraft make a field day for children whose imaginations soar at the National Museum of Naval Aviation, a free attraction in Pensacola.

Kids learn most from climbing into the models and simulators and doing a tour of the awesome Flight Adventure Deck, held three times daily. Here they watch and participate in demonstrations of propulsion, motion, air pressure, buoyancy and Galileo's Law of Falling Bodies, exhibits that seem more like games and goofing around than learning.

When it's time to leave the earth's atmosphere, space out at the Kennedy Space Center, a multi-campus complex where you can feel zero gravity, touch a moon rock, meet live astronauts and take a zany flight to Mars.
Imagine leaving your home forever to travel halfway around the world and battle the enemy in a strange land of alligators and dark-skinned giants.


TIME TRAVEL

Imagine leaving your home forever to travel halfway around the world and battle the enemy in a strange land of alligators and dark-skinned giants. The year is 1740 and the people have traveled from Spain to defend New World holdings against pirates and Englishmen. Costumed re-enactors at Colonial Spanish Quarter in St. Augustine flesh out the experience with different demonstrations of everyday home life - cooking at the open hearth, gardening, weaving, blacksmithing, net making and roof thatching.

Nearby Old Florida Museum accomplishes the same goal by setting kids to everyday tasks as done by their peers from pre-colonial days into the early 20th century. In a park surrounding an old wooden general store, kids can write with a quill, grind corn, scrape out a dugout canoe, play Native American games, dip candles and more.

Tallahassee's Museum of Florida History's flashback begins in prehistoric Florida with a giant robotic armadillo. It travels through eras of Timucuan Indians, Seminole and Civil wars, tin can tourism and modern times. In Grandma's Attic, kids can try out an old school desk, historic costumes and vintage toys.


GLUB-GLUB-GLIB

I started out as lowly krill on the food chain, but by the time the Immersion Cinema experience ended, I had advanced to loggerhead turtle, shark and humpback whale - despite bouts of starvation and close encounters with predators. In Sarasota, Mote Aquarium's latest virtual underwater experience involves families in marine science through big-screen and interactive small-screen media. "If you're not careful," the big-screen film introduction warns, "you might learn something."

Kids love the water and its mysterious fauna, and several Florida attractions feed their natural curiosity of things they see or can't see at our beaches and within our generous waterways. Mote's groundbreaking role in shark research reflects in its immersion experience, shark tank and Sea Cinema film, where you are the shark and learn how to see, smell and feed as it does.

Fort Myers' Imaginarium took over an old water treatment plant, so it's all about water, whether you're participating in a hands-on program beneath the brightly painted water tower, looking at sharks and moray eels in the aquariums or walking through a thunderstorm - without feeling one drop of water.

In Tampa, Florida Aquarium's new outdoor playground lets you get wet, too. Special presentations go in-depth with swim-with-the-fishes programs, reef tank dives, feedings, shark shows and behind-the-scenes tours.

Dozens of aquariums ranging from 10 to 900 gallons fascinate fish-eyers at South Florida Science Museum in West Palm Beach. Ever see a bamboo shark, a bubble anemone or a lion fish? Meet these and other under-da-sea creatures in the cool new wavy, aquarium-lined environment.


A SIP OF CREATIVE JUICE

We knew we shouldn't, but we peeked anyway at one of the blue slips of paper folded and stabbed into a crack of the prayer wall. "I wish I can marry Harry Potter," it read in second-grade scrawl and innocence. We were in Jerusalem, virtually speaking, at the Young at Art Children's Museum's Global Village, which is actually in Davie. Composing a prayer to be sent to Jerusalem for blessing is one of the ways recreated lands shift children into creative gear with the stimulation of exotic cultures and ways.

Grab a passport, then make drums in Africa, papel picado doilies in Mexico, a fish kite in Japan and more. Live musician and artist presentations, drop-in workshops and one-day camps further ingrain art into children's subconscious at this colorful playground.

At edgy Miami Children's Museum, the All About Art and World Music Studio exhibits provide juicy experiences that have kids creating their own works of art and sound. Children can enroll in age-specific classes where they can hear "Happy Birthday" to a Middle Eastern tune, sing karaoke, learn from local artists and experiment with painting.


NATURE CENTERED

 Get familiar with nature at these touchy-feely places.

Crane Point, Marathon. An aquarium room makes you feel 10 feet below, the kids museum has a pirate ship playroom and nature trails lead to a bird hospital.

Florida Oceanographic Coastal Center, Stuart. Aquariums filled with coastal sea life and hands-on activities like stingray feedings and shallow touch tanks introduce local underwater species across from the beach.

The Conservancy of Southwest Florida Naples Nature Center. Snakes and marine animals live inside; birds and other local critters are on the mend outside.

J.N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge Education Center, Sanibel Island. Life-sized, 3-D models introduce the habitat of alligators and roseate spoonbills. Do a wildlife rubbing or build-a-bird.

Gumbo Limbo Nature Center, Boca Raton. Across from the beach, it holds tanks of baby loggerhead turtles and sea denizens. Walk the trail to the observation tower.

Calusa Nature Center, Fort Myers. From baby alligators to an albino raccoon, see live animals in the nature center, along the trail and in the butterfly house.

Marine Science Center, Ponce Inlet. Aquariums teeming with Florida wildlife, a turtle and bird rehabilitation room and a craft room are open to the public.

Gulf Specimen Marine Lab, Panacea. This place takes "touch tank" to the extreme, putting gushy, prickly creatures safely in kids' hands.