2018 Golden Teddy Awards — Out + About

Winner: KiDiMu — Kids Discovery Museum

The vote tally tells us that hopping a ferry to Bainbridge Island for a visit to KiDiMu — Kids Discovery Museum is always a good idea. This hands-on, please-touch children’s museum brings sunshine to rainy days. The Waldorf-inspired Totally Tot space is a calm oasis for the youngest of visitors and their caregivers. And it’s a toss-up when it comes to deciding who likes making pictures more — kids or parents? — with the giant, colorful pegs on the Light Wall in the museum’s Science and Literacy Hall.

Finalists

On the Kitsap Peninsula, Ahoy Kitsap wins buckets of votes for its active climbing structures, with a café right next to it, so adults can relax. Readers love Ahoy for its all-day-play admission policy, its positive staff, cleanliness, great play equipment and amazing birthday parties.

Voters with the very young in mind adore PlayHappy Café, a Lynnwood indoor play space for kids newborn–6. Of course, it’s easy to love PlayHappy, with its separate space for infants and crawlers, a café with free Wi-Fi, enrichment classes and fabulously decorated birthday-party rooms.

Roo’s World of Discovery is a family mainstay because it’s both a place for children and a community for parents and caregivers. Beyond open hours for play in its Montessori-inspired play space, it offers low-sensory hours, parent groups, play groups, workshops and even coworking opportunities, during which your kids play, supervised, while you cross off the to-dos on your list.

A North Seattle find, Seattle ReCreative is part “creative reuse” retailer and part community art center. It blends teaching skills such as fine art, woodworking and sewing with a modern-day mission to find new life for materials that would usually end up in a landfill. Shop for secondhand crafty supplies; sign up for a kid, adult or family class; or drop by with your littles for art-infused playtime.