"DR." Kelsey Tetreault has startling news for her young patient, Jacob Conrad. "Oh my gosh, it looks like there's an alligator in your ear!" she pronounces, scurrying off to grab a pair of blunt-nosed, plastic medical scissors to use for an emergency extraction. The appointment isn't over yet: Checking the boy's blood pressure, the "physician" discovers another alarming malady. "Oh my gosh, it feels like there's a monkey in your arm!" she exclaims. Jacob's reaction to these dire diagnoses: giggles and more giggles. And then it's his turn to be the doctor.
Such off-the-wall dramas take place regularly in the medical center at Explore and Moore Children's Discovery Museum in Woodbridge. Stocked with everything a make-believe doctor needs -- gauze, a stethoscope, crutches, X-rays, even a plastic baby "patient" -- the medical center is one of more than a dozen stations designed to stimulate imaginative play.
"It's a place where they can go to let loose and be creative," says Barb Lee, visiting with her 6-year-old daughter, Rachel, along with Ivy Tetreault and Ivy's daughter Kelsey, also 6, and nephew Jacob, 4.
- Located off a busy intersection just minutes from Potomac Mills, the 18-month-old discovery museum gets discovered primarily through word of mouth from families who visit for day-care field trips or birthday parties. Although not as large as Imagine That!, the museum-play center in Rockville that closed last year, Explore and Moore features similar activities. It's an ideal destination for stir-crazy kids on rainy spring days.
Owners Jim and Karen Scott began developing the museum about six years ago, when their son was 2, as an alternative for Northern Virginia residents who found D.C. museum visits with young children too time consuming, says Manager Virginia Lacey. The couple started collecting and building exhibit components, and eventually found a site in a business park near Route 123. Situated in three former office suites with lots of windows, the museum "has a very homey feel to it," Lacey says. It gets its name from characters the owners made up: a dog, Explore, and a boy, Moore, pictured on walls near many exhibits.
