Santa Maria Valley Discovery Museum

Santa Maria Valley Discovery Museum mission is to foster family and youth-inspired learning by creating experiences to explore:

ourselves,
our valley,
our world
and beyond.

The museum’s exhibit and program-based “please touch” atmosphere engenders the best in self-discovery for children and their families. As the only children’s museum in Santa Barbara County, we currently serve over 32,000 children and their families every year. We continue to grow in both service and demand.

The Discovery Museum first opened its doors in 1996 in a small strip mall in Santa Maria. In 2004, the museum completed a capital campaign, renovated a space in an historic commercial building in the heart of downtown. Here they installed hands-on learning exhibits for children and opened its new doors to the community in January of 2005.

This 13,000 square foot facility now has over 25 exhibit areas, including five new exhibits — the Discovery Reading Tree, Discovery Farms Produce Truck, Catching Air, Moxie Cafe and our “Recycling is Fun” kiosk.

Our museum exhibits are expanded and supplemented for the visitor through our weekly enrichment and education programming. Our Tuesday Tales, Preschool Patrol, Passport Thursday, Fit Friday, Science Saturday and Super Sunday programs grew so much in popularity over the past two years, we added a second afternoon session so that more families could participate. These much-beloved programs are now offered at 11:00 and 2:30, six days a week.

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