New kids' exhibits open at Long Island children's and art museums

Kids can have realistic experiences in  outer space as they climb inside a rover based on a NASA spacecraft at the Long Island Children's Museum in Uniondale. They’ll pretend they’re making touchdowns on lunar surfaces and building landscapes on Mars. The hands-on fun continues as kids make their versions of rockets and Martian friends.

For a different lifelike experience, friends and families can travel back to the Roaring ’20s this winter at the Nassau County Museum of Art.

"In the '20s, it was all about travel, escapism, imagination, exoticism and going places that put you out of the ordinary," says Franklin Hill Perrell, chief curator at the art museum. "It brought the extraordinary into the everyday life." Visitors will notice everything from teapots to unusual art to mannequins of ladies wearing comfortable, waistless dresses instead of frilly frocks and corsets. Afterward, families create art projects based on what they’ve seen.

Here’s where your adventure awaits.

Fly to the moon at the Long Island Children's Museum

In the new "Moon to Mars" exhibit, kids can visit six sections where they can imagine life in space. They’ll begin by dressing up in astronaut costumes, hopping inside a simple version of NASA’s Orion Spacecraft and steering to a mysterious planet. Outside the rover, they can gather piles of 2-foot-wide foam blocks and build their own Martian or lunar landscapes. "There’s no right or wrong answer," says Ashley Niver, director of education. "But there are photos in the exhibit to give kids a frame of reference. That way, they can learn more about the goal of their mission and the surface of Mars."

Kids can create paper rockets and experiment with them at a console featuring three pipes attached to air pumps. Children slide their rockets onto the pipes, use the pump to build up air pressure and launch the rockets at hanging models of planets to see where they will land.

In the Lunar Leaps section, visitors can have a "moon walking experience" with reduced gravitational pull. The area includes several soft gray domes where kids will bounce from one spot to the next. They can also head over to an interactive screen kiosk where they’ll check out the latest spacesuits or find out what astronauts are currently up to.

On specific weekends, staff members will lead additional hands-on pop-up projects to complement the exhibit. Visitors can make their own Orion rovers, make interstellar Pluto portraits or an alien friend to take home.

Cost $18 ages 1 and older; art pop ups are included with price of admission; exhibit runs through May 4

More info 516-224-5800, licm.org

Travel back in time at Nassau County Museum of Art 

The new "Deco at 100" exhibit highlights the Roaring '20s. Women were newly able to vote, drive cars and work in offices. Architects designed skyscrapers, radiators replaced fireplaces and for the first time, people traveled all over the world by plane. They could reach places across the globe such as Africa, Asia, and Egypt, absorb the cultures, and combine them with classic American styles.

The galleries are filled with numerous examples of how art, building designs, fashion and even the dishes families used on kitchen tables have multicultural/modern patterns. Visitors can have fun with a scavenger hunt clue sheet as they pass by a painting of a mythological character wearing a crown made of ears of corn or cityscapes based on the way pyramids were constructed.

Head to the museum's art studio for hands-on fun. Families are welcome to attend a different workshop each Saturday and create projects based on displays in the exhibit. Make an Art Deco pinecone bird or a cityscape inside a candy box. The workshops are free with the price of museum admission. Alternatively, families can participate in Saturday family art workshops without visiting the museum ($10 per child, $20 per adult).

Cost $15; $5 ages 12 and under; exhibit runs through June 15

More info 516-484-9338, nassaumuseum.org