If you’re looking for an educational and interactive adventure for little and big kids alike, step into a roar-some dinosaur adventure at the PumpHouse Museum here in Kingston, Ontario!
As a local mom of 2 boys, aged 4 and 6 years, the PumpHouse Museum has always been a go-to destination here in Kingston, especially during the chilly indoor months (you can check out my other favourite things to do with kids to warm up, in this post here). I have been taking my children here since they were only a few months old, and that’s because the PumpHouse Museum caters to kids and their families first. Because let’s be real – no parent wants what was supposed to be a fun outing to end up feeling stressful. We have all been there, chasing after kids while whisper-shouting “no touching!” behind them, lunging for runaway sleeves or little hands we just can’t quite catch. Rest assured that at the PumpHouse Museum, you won’t be doing any of that! Because here, your little ones can play and explore freely, and their newest exhibit is no exception.
I love that the PumpHouse Museum is never too crowded or busy, allowing for safe and silly play!
Discover the “Dinosaurs Among Us” Exhibit
The PumpHouse Museum’s newest exhibit, Dinosaurs Among Us, is currently on display until April 15, 2026, on loan from the prestigious American Museum of Natural History. It features real fossils and casts, including a leg bone that your little ones are welcome to touch (on loan from the Royal Ontario Museum). Many other artifacts, such as prehistoric skulls, raptor casts, fossils (thanks to the Miller Museum of Geology), and even a real ostrich skull, are also on display, allowing this long-ago learning to come to life in a way that allows little ones to engage directly with the past.
My kids enjoyed looking at all of the real fossils and casts, and my husband and I were amazed at how much we absorbed as well. The Dinosaurs Among Us exhibit is not only captivating for children, but we found it to be genuinely fascinating for us, as adults, as well. It brought to life much of what our kids had seen in books and on television, letting them experience this learning in a hands-on and tactile way. They could measure themselves against dinosaur silhouettes, compare sizes, and see how feathers evolved. We talked about how flight developed, and how modern birds are actually living descendants of dinosaurs while pointing to the pictures. While some of this information wasn’t new to us, seeing it presented with vivid visuals, accurate animal sizes, and timelines really reinforced their understanding while sparking further curiosity.
After finishing with the dinosaur exhibit, my kids headed straight for their favourite (and permanent) spaces at the PumpHouse Museum in Kingston, the Swyrich Train Room and Discovery Centre.
Explore The Swyrich Train Room at the PumpHouse Museum
The Swyrich Train Room is always a hit, offering interactive play with a dinosaur twist during our visit. Our youngest train operators eagerly pushed buttons while keeping an eye out for hidden dinosaurs perched atop motorized trains and displays. They have always loved watching the model locomotives zoom through tunnels along the tracks near the ceiling here, while mimicking their movements and recreating the same routes on the classic children’s train table, complete with wooden tracks and train toys that let them experiment and play for ages. It’s a perfect hands-on learning space, where kids can engage with how real trains operate while exploring STEM concepts.
Hands-On Learning at the Discovery Centre
Through the doorway nearby, you’ll find the Discovery Centre. But let’s be honest, it’s more likely that your children discover this space before you do, as it is entirely designed with them in mind! This welcoming space encourages hands-on exploration and engaged play, making it one of the best Kingston indoor activities around. Here, children can experiment and create with toys and manipulatives such as K’Nex, blocks, and trains, while engaging with feature crafts that build on exhibit content. My boys loved the magic marker feather craft, choosing their own paper feathers, cutting them out, and decorating them however they wished. They then attached their creations to the massive magnetic dinosaur on the wall, reinforcing what we had learned about dinosaur feathers, flight, and the connection to modern birds.
Museum staff regularly rotate the learning materials and activities available within the Discovery Centre, ensuring kids are able to make concrete and tactile connections to abstract concepts, in this case, deepening their understanding of prehistoric life. My boys eagerly explored every drawer of manipulatives to investigate what toys were inside, and used the massive play table to test out their ideas, before bouncing away to play with the oversized light-up pegboard and light table. It was hard to tear them away from this STEM-focused, hands-on museum experience in Kingston!
In my mind, what really sets the PumpHouse Museum apart is that it’s never just about looking; it’s about doing. And as a mother and educator, that’s important to me. I want to plan a family outing that goes off without a hitch, where the kids have fun effortlessly, and we, as parents, aren’t stressing about what those little hands and feet are getting into. When children touch, build, test, and experiment with materials, they are not just absorbing information; they’re making concrete sense of the world around them, allowing them to connect big ideas to their world. The PumpHouse is a wonderful place to spend time together, learning and playing in a relaxed and safe environment.
Family-Friendly Events at the PumpHouse Museum
- All Aboard: The Dino Train – Dec 13th, 2025, families can make ornaments, interact with a “bird expert station” craft snowflakes, and “rescue toy dinosaurs.
- Fossils & Feathers: an educational program exploring the link between birds and dinosaurs, tailored to students in Kindergarten to Grade 6. Book this for your next school trip/group program.
Follow the PumpHouse Museum online on Instagram and Facebook for the latest, and be sure to visit next time you’re looking for indoor fun that keeps the kids moving and learning, while allowing you to (mostly) relax.
-Anna
Disclosure: This content was sponsored in collaboration with The PumpHouse Museum/The City of Kingston.
All opinions and comments are my own.
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