Best Places to Take Young Children
Here are some of the best places
in the Bay Area and vicinity to take pre-school-age children to:
I have two little children. As of Spring 2001, Paulina is 19
month and Andre is 2 month old. So where do we go? Looking at webpages and visiting
pllaces I discovered the following places. Some
of these pictures are really old, but this is because I took some pictures from
existing pages. Playground equipment has a tendency to get worn out and replaced,
so some of these may be different now, but the playgrounds should still be good.
Select a category:
| Playgrounds | Museums, Zoos and Playlands | Amusement Parks | Trains, Boats, and Planes | Other Links |
Playgrounds
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Dennis the Menace Playground, Monterey This is a huge, complex playground!!!. It's on the shores of El Estero Lake near Fisherman's Wharf. There's an incredible array of playground equipment here, many of which are unique. There's a steam locomotive for climbing on, tunnels, caves, cable bridges, hills with slides, a topiary maze, play boats, and a unique rotating play structure (shown below). The lake has paddle boats and ducks for feeding. |
 
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Golden Gate Park, San Francisco This has changed over the years, but it's a large playground with a large array of play equipment, including hillside slides. A nearby merry-go-round has carved animals that are works of art. The main playground is shown on the right, but there are smaller playgrounds in other parts of the park. |
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Houge Park, San Jose This neighborhood playground is near Good Samaritan Hospital, near Los Gatos. Nothing fancy, but it's a big playground with lots of play equipment for children of all ages, including a par course for adults. |
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Brigadoon Park, San Jose This park is in East San Jose near Silver Creek High School. Its landscaping simulates lakes and islands. The long concrete slides shown below are thrilling rides. |
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Greystone Park, San Jose This is a pleasant, tree-shaded park in the Almaden Valley near Los Alamitos Creek. |
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Almaden Meadows Park, San Jose This small park in the Almaden Valley is very close to Almaden Quicksilver County Park. Part of the park is developed, with picnic tables, lawns, and a playground. Part of it is a rugged, undeveloped hill, cut by a small steep ravine. The hill becomes covered with grass and wildflowers in the spring. |
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Serra Park, Sunnyvale This Sunnyvale park had an amazing array of play equipment and landscaping. One of its features was the riverboat shown on the right. There is also a forest of poles that sprayed water in all directions. There is a natural-looking artificial rocky creek that runs by the redwood-shaded picnic areas. This flows into ponds and fountains that kids could splash around in. |
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Las Palmas Park, Sunnyvale This beautiful park won awards for its design. It has lakes and hilly climbing structures with water sprays (if they're still working). |
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This park is on grassy open fields near the bay. The bay breezes make this a great place for kite-flying. There are picnic areas and new playground equipment. |
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Coyote Point Recreation Area, San Mateo This is a huge recreation area near the San Francisco International Airport, on a promontary that juts out into the Bay. There are picnic areas in eucalyptus groves and near the Bay, the Coyote Point Environmental Museum, a marina, a golf course, a swimming beach, wide open grassy fields, and several playgrounds. The largest playground, shown below, has a hillside slide (shown below) with crawl tunnels. |
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Memorial Park, Cupertino This large park is near DeAnza College. It's built around a complex of lakes, fountains and artificial creeks. There are several play areas here. One of these has a simulated western town. |
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Shoup Park, Los Altos This is a small, lovely community park in the very upscale neighborhood of Los Altos. It's along a creek, with picnic areas shaded by large redwood trees. There are separate play areas for small children and older children. One of the play areas is like a prairie dog town with tunnels and "peekaboo" holes. A short distance away, along the creek, is a nature preserve, with boardwalk trails through a shady redwood grove and hillside trails. |
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Central Park, Fremont This is a huge park near the Fremont Civic Center, along the shores of Lake Elizabeth. A rocky creek flows into the lake. The lake has paddleboats for rent. There's a large swim lagoon next to the lake. |
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This shady park has a Japanese garden and a miniature train ride. |
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Santa Clara Central Park This park is next to the Olympic-class Santa Clara swim complex. It is divided by a deep creekbed, with bridges joining the halves of the park. There are artificial lakes here and several playgrounds. |
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Codornices Park, Berkeley This tree-shaded park is in a scenic location in the Berkeley hills, near the Municipal Rose Garden. |
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Junipero Serra Park, San Bruno This hilltop park overlooks SFO and the Bay, with fantastic views. Trails lead through eucalyptus groves. |
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Vasona Lake Park and Oak Meadow Park, Los Gatos These are great parks in Los Gatos. |
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Other Parks where I don't have more information yet:
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Museums, Zoos and
Playlands
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Children's Discovery Museum, San Jose The Bay Area is fortunate to have two world-class children's museums. One of them is the Children's Discovery Museum in San Jose. Built with millions of dollars in private and public funds, its large distinctive modern purple building is one of the highlights of downtown San Jose's renaissance. It's the pre-school counterpart to the nearby Tech Museum of Innovation. Here children can exercise their imagination as they pretend they're driving a fire engine, living on a valley farm, working in a doctor's office, programming a traffic signal, running a switchboard, opening a bank vault, and sorting mail in a post office. There's also a high-tech media studio, a theater for children to put on their own performances, picturephones for talking with others in the museum, and a climbing structure with video effects. |
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Bay Area Discovery Museum, Sausalito This is the other great children's museum in the Bay Area. This is much like San Francisco's Exploratorium in that it is housed in old public buildings that have been transformed into a great museum by the efforts of volunteers. It's in a spectacular location--near the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge at East Fort Baker. It has several permanent exhibits. One of the most unique is a crawl-through simulated underwater tunnel, complete with live fish. There's also a realistic fishing boat where kids can pretend they're salmon fisherman, and a fisherman's wharf where kids can pretend they're selling fish. In another area, kids can build their own bridges and walk on a model of the Golden Gate Bridge. There is also a maze of optical illusions, a science lab, media center, art room, and ceramics studio. |
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| Happy Hollow Park and Zoo, San Jose |  |
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Children's Fairyland and Rotary Science Center, Lakeside Park, Oakland The Little Farm, Tilden Park, Berkeley Micke Grove Park and Zoo, Lodi Pixie Woods, Stockton Howarth Park, Santa Rosa |
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Amusement Parks
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| Great America | |
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Trains, Boats, and
Planes
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| Traintown, Sonoma |  |
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| Steam trains, Tilden Regional Park, Berkeley |   |
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Junior railroad, Central Park, San Mateo Train ride at Casa De Fruita, Pacheco Pass, east of Gilroy |
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| Howarth Park, Santa Rosa |  |
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| Other
Links Back to Top | Back to all links overview |
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Back to Top | Back to all links overview Disclaimer: Okay, Okay I admit, most stuff is taken from the following great page (I recommend it, lots of useful, local info: Ron Horii's Bay Area Back Pages (I hope he'll forgive me stealing his info, but I just wanted to save the info for my own in case he ever decides to closde these pages... |
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