Things to do in Manhattan Kansas with Kids
We only spend one day in Manhattan Kansas but we really packed in the activities and were quite impressed with everywhere we visited. Every summer Kansas does something called Sunflower Summer where families can get into attractions all over Kansas one time for free. It’s pretty awesome. So if you live in Kansas some of these places may grant you 1 free entrance with the Sunflower Summer app.
1 Flint Hills Discovery Center
We spent all morning at Flint Hills Discovery Center which was awesome! There was so much to do there. We watched a 15-minute immersive video about the prairie. They use wind, snow, smoke, and more to tell the story. The kids thought it was awesome! The whole bottom floor features exhibits about the prairie. My kids’ favorite part of the first floor was a room where you feel like you are underground with roots dangling down from the ceiling and you learn all about the dirt, roots, and bugs underground.
The second floor has a prairie playscape where the kids had fun pretending to be cowboys. This floor also has a room for a traveling exhibit. During our trip, that gallery was all about outerspace. We did a lifesize space maze, made paper rockets to test launch, and played with gyroscopes.
The third floor has a short walk through a prairie garden and terrace. It would be a nice place to eat if you packed a lunch.
In total we spent about 2-3 hours at the Flint Hills Discovery Center. We probably could have spent a bit longer, but we wanted to have time for lunch and some afternoon activities.
2 Midwest Dream Car Collection
Oak really really loves cars. Some kids have a comfort pacifier or stuffed animal. For Oak a little metal matchbox car is his comfort animal. So of course when he saw that there was a car museum he had to go there and honestly the cars they had were pretty cool. They had a car that you can drive into the water and use as a boat, Sonny and Cher’s matching custom Mustang convertibles with fur seats, a bubble car covered in corks, a motorbike that was once a car (converted by a man stranded in the Moroccan desert), one of the first gas-powered cars - a 1886 Benz, and Volkswagen’s car that can be anything with removable doors, removable top, removable windshield, and plaid seats. Of all the interesting cars, Oak’s favorite was the white road racing car of course. Other than just looking at cars, there was a small playroom for kids with lots of space to build car tracks.
We spent about an hour at the Midwest Dream Car Collection.
3 Insect Zoo
This place isn’t very big, but the bugs are SO COOL. They have a colony of leaf-cutter ants that we got to see them feed. It was amazing how quickly the leaf disappeared, and it was fun to watch all the little ants carrying pieces of leaves into their hole. Nate’s favorite bug to watch was the stick bug, and it was a chance for us to talk to Oak about camouflage. Oak liked looking at the scorpions with the black lights. They also had a kitchen display filled with cockroaches, flies, and other bugs, which Oak thought was pretty funny. It was a good opportunity to talk about keeping food cleaned up so you don’t get bugs in your house! Outside the Insect Zoo, we enjoyed strolling through the gardens. We spent about an hour at the Zoo and garden.
Side note: For lunch we went to a place called Bourbon and Baker. It wasn’t our favorite. We are not fans of hot spicy food (especially for kids) so we asked for things to be made not spicy and we found them a bit bland and boring.
