oh wow! the roger & gloria jones children's center for science & technology

While the date of my visit say January 2015, I actually started volunteering back in June 2014 and have been there most of the summer. I went back to volunteering there again around Christmas after a busy semester in college and plan on volunteering there again this spring on some weekends!I gotta tell you, bring your kids here if they're bored at home and tired of playing video games all day! A lot of neat hands-on exhibits here for ALL ages!You can also volunteer here! Just go to their front desk and ask! Great people here!

We took our 3 kids - 2,4,7 - and they had a great time. We had fun experiencing it with them. Not terribly expensive at $40. All of the staff was very friendly and engaged with the kids. If there is one negative it's a bit small. Plan on 2 hours to do everything in the place.

We were very pleasantly surprised by this little gem. Lots of interactive engaging working exhibits. Our grandchildren loved posing behind the desk in the "TV studio" to deliver the weather report. The music exhibits and water play spouts were also lots of fun. Other favorites were using an ATM machine, running the movies backwards and forwards in slow motion and making faces that were displayed on the large wall.

While this place is small, it provides a great educational experience. I am eighteen and I love this place. The people there are so amazing and helpful. I do agree that it can get a bit boring, but watch the schedule for special programs, some of them can get kids attention for hours. If you plan to go several times, just buy a year pass, they are worth the money and it is much easier to isit frequently. There are vending machines, but I would recommend bringing a lunch with you or going to one of the nearby restaurants. Everything is clean and messes are taken care of immediately.

My nieces and nephew (ages 2, 3, & 4) love visiting OH WOW! Youngstown is a short drive from western PA and the Center is the perfect spot to spend a morning or afternoon! A must if you are looking for a fun and educational option for the kiddos .... adults will enjoy it too!Side note: Check out their online calendar to see if they have field trips scheduled before planning your trip!

This is a nice place to visit with smaller children. Anyone in the over 10 yr crowd might be bored with it as it is geared towards 3-8 year olds. You will only need an hour or two for your visit as it is very small.

My 3 and 4 year old girls absolutely loved playing here! My first impression was that it was a little small, but after seeing everything there is to do here, it is plenty large enough. We were there for 3 hours and did not experience everything there was to offer. My girls were completely entertained every minute we spent there, and more importantly, they learned a lot at the same time! We will definitely be going back on our next trip to the area.

My children loved 'Oh Wow' it is small enough for you to stand in the middle of the floor and observe all of your children playing at different locations. I wish it was a little cheaper but If you live in this area it is worth it because you don't have to drive a long distance for your children to have a blast.

My daughter 10 now love it, though the younger the better. They change things around every so often and it is amazing seeing them learn when they can walk around and do things there!

OH Wow is the top family destination in Youngstown. Great fun for kids of all ages. Staff is incredibly friendly and helpful, always willing to show kids and their parents how best to interact with the activities. They are always expanding with new opportunities. If you can arrange to go when they have a hosted event, your learning experience will be even better and more fun.

My son and his wife and daughter were in town from Boston and we decided to take them there. We had heard much about it and it was a great visit. Their daughter is 3 1/2 and she had a blast. It's not real large inside, but there are many interesting stations which include music, weather, water, airplanes, video, architecture, etc. Most kids from 2-12 will enjoy it. It really helps if the parents or whoever chaperones gets involved. My daughter-in-law teaches kindergarten and she loved it. Convenient parking on the street behind it and you can check online to see if there are any field trips that are coming in. There were about 30-40 other children from a camp there along with regular visitors and it still was not too crowded.

Was looking for something for my daughter and I to do on a chilly and dreary day. We decided to go to Oh Wow because we had heard it was nice and we had never been there. We both had a great time!! Although it is not super huge inside we spent over 2 hours there!! After we had seen everything there was, we started over!! When it was time to go I had a hard time getting my daughter to leave, she mentioned on the way out that she wanted a years membership for christmas!! I saw children as young as about 2yrs to grown adults all having fun!! So nice to have something like this in Youngstown!!

My boyfriend (24) and I (20) went earlier today. He is studying chemistry at the nearby university and as a member of the local ACS he had volunteered here before for their annual Silly Science Sunday event, and this piqued my interest in visiting it. I went to Inventure Place, now the National Inventor's Hall of Fame, in third grade for a field trip and had been wanting to go back ever since. This museum had very similar activities to what Inventure Place had on their bottom floor at the time (eleven years ago, give or take a few months), so it brought back many happy memories for me. The exhibits only took us about an hour to get through, but they only took that long because we couldn't stop playing at one table at which you use jets of water and observe their effects on ball pit balls or an exhibit with vacuum tubes through which you could send either a ball pit ball or a mesh handkerchief-like cloth. Had we visited each exhibit and spent just enough time to get the gist of what it did we probably would have only taken about 30 minutes, but where would the fun have been in that? The exhibits I can recall include the aforementioned two plus:* A water play table with accessories including pieces to make "dams";* A storm simulator with a powerful fan and buttons to set what kind of "storm" to make, as well as their respective wind speeds;* A laser guitar with a button on the wall to choose which "instrument" or sound effect to make it sound like;* Fun house mirrors;* A green screen for kids to pretend they are forecasting the weather;* Gear and magnetic play walls;* A musical apparatus similar to a xylophone, but with large plastic pipes to be struck with large, flat pieces of foam;* A paper airplane folding station and launcher, complete with a target in front of it, in an elevated area alongside what appeared to be an airplane ride (similar to the quarter-operated rides sometimes seen outside stores);* An echo tube;* A wall with percussion instruments on it and a control board to program a rhythm;* A shake table with blocks, to build something on and simulate an earthquake;* An area with large, soft plastic blocks in various shapes to build an archway or tunnel;* A video display whose speed can be controlled and reversed with a knob on the projector;* A xylophone, glockenspiel and steel drum on the bottom floor, as well as a "building station" for simple woodwork;* A geodesic dome encased in glass with "critters" made of pompoms, feathers and the like to look like bugs or birds; this exhibit was the coolest, so I don't want to give away just what it does!All in all, Oh Wow! is an awesome little museum for people of all ages who just want to go do something fun for maybe an hour. I'd recommend it in an instant.

This is a great place to get anyone especially your kids into STEM. If you look at the brochure, you're sure to want to go. It's full of great activities for everyone. You have to do the hurricane wind simulator.

This is an excellent place to take your children / grandchildren on those wet days when school is out. From the "acoustic" guitars to the vacuum pipes and the water feature, wind machine and paper dart launcher this is a great place for the kids to while away many hours.