Leah White performing for New Year's Eve Party in London- at Wonderwild

Wonderwild is excited to announce that Leah White will be performing during the New Year's Eve Party in London on Thursday December 31st! Don't forget to buy your tickets in advance!

Leah is the winner of the Nickelodeon's Parent's Choice Award for Best Entertainer/ Music for 2009! Her music is the perfect alternative for original and rockin' children's music. It's not just for children, but for moms and dads too! Check out her latest album released in Sept. 2009, A White Christmas. It's classic Christmas music that you've never heard before and inspired/ written based on Mom's feedback on what they feel is the essence of a modern family's holiday season.

Now, we all need a little more of what Mom thinks this holiday season, don't you think?!!

CLASSES start in January 2010 - FREE CLASS PASS!

We're excited to introduce classes for kids at Wonderwild starting in January. Our class schedule is here. And for an introductory time, we're offering a FREE CLASS PASS! That means you can check out our first class for free--just give us a call at 832-863-3275 to rsvp for the particular class that you are interested in.

If you want to enroll (before 1/31/10), we have a special promotion going on where we'll give you $20 off the class fee of $150. Get a friend to join and receive an additional $10 off!

Sign up for classes for kids in art, music, baby movement and development, yoga for kids, and martial arts with a sports twist!

Above are a few pics--examples of what kids would do in the MY ART GALLERY class. Here, the kids have done self portraits using lost and found objects. We had a BLAST making them!! My favorite is the one where the child said he drew a picture of himself waking up out of bed and had FIRE coming out of his ears!!

OY! New Year's Eve in London!!

Get ready Thursday, December 31, from 4:30-6:30pm to countdown the New Year -- London style! Our 6pm is their midnight, so get ready to rock and roll the night away to some live music. We’ll have complimentary food and drink plus other fun activities. This is a great way for families to celebrate, play and bring in the New Year together! Space is limited.$15 per child. Members are free. You must purchase tickets in advance by calling 832-863-3275 or email wonderwhy@gowonderwild.com.

FREE Breakfast with Santa

You heard it! It's free!
Come meet Santa Saturday, December 19, from 8-10am, in your holiday best for some light bites and a photo session with a real bearded Santa Claus! We’ll give you a free 4x6 photo to remember the occasion. Photo packages will be available for purchase as well. Space is limited. You must pre-register by December 16 for the event by calling 832-863-3275.

If you'd like to play afterwards a while, it's just $10 for walkers and $8 for pre-walkers.

Maybe we can get Santa to jump with us on the jumping pillow!

PLAY OR SHOP Day after Thanksgiving

PLAY or SHOP Day After Thanksgiving Day!

Come PLAY at Wonderwild Friday, November 27, to work off the turkey gut and pumpkin pie thighs! Bring your whole family and have fun playing together. By the way, we will be open for open play every weekday in November from 9am-7pm, except for Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 26.

$10 for walkers, $8 pre-walkers; adults, infants 6 mos and under, and members are free.

Or take advantage of our SHOPand Drop program Nov. 27. From 9:30am-12:30pm, we’ll watch your kids and make sure they have a great time while you get a head start on holiday shopping! We’ll do an art project, groove to some music, and of course, play in our play area. Walkers only. Child must be potty-trained. Must bring own lunch.

$25 per child. Members are free. You must pre-register by calling 832-863-3275 or email wonderwhy@gowonderwild.com.

Playscape is UP!!

Our three story playscape, built around the train station, is up and GOES UP--giving our kids more room to climb, run, and slide!

Wonderwild Halloween Parties!

The weather looked rather frightful on Thursday but we had no fear as we started setting up for our Friday night festival! Over 125 people packed into our 7200 square feet of space. Tom's Fun Band http://www.tomsfunband.com did a stupendous job performing for all the kids and then Tyagaraja closed the evening by taking it to another level for the enjoyment of the adults (while the kids played on and on and on).

Saturday we had an equal amount of people but a much younger crowd. There was free pizza. Awesome coffee from our favorite coffee shop in the heights ANTIDOTE! Drinks, pumpkin cookies and cheesy popcorn from Whole Foods. And free frozen yogurt from Berripop! At the end of the evening, we gave out Wonderwild bags with free Wonderwild tshirts and a stuffed animal friend to go trick or treating with.

We hope everyone had a great time!! The only tears we witnessed were from kids who didn't want to leave at the end of the evening.

Currently, Wonderwild is closed in order to install some new equipment.

Hope to see you all soon for our first day of open play, Monday, November 9 (projected date)!

HALLOWEEN PARTY FOR KIDS

Moms, dads, children, come to our Halloween party at Wonderwild! Click on the above invitation for more gruesome details! MWaahhh-ha ha ha ha!!

Sneak peek at our new place

Here's an artist rendering of the Wonderwild space. Imagine yourself standing in the 4200+ square feet play area, looking back into the party rooms and the hallway leading back to the lobby. You'll notice a garage door that opens up into the party room, giving us the option to close for privacy or open for that block-party feel.

Of course, the space won't look exactly like this right when we open, but we don't think the kiddies will care one bit!!

When will you OPEN?

We get this question texted to us, emailed, through phone calls, smoke signals, you name it! We're experiencing some small speed bumps in construction (nothing we can't fix) and so we're now saying October rather than September.

Looking at the bright side, that gives us more time to prepare for our kids to play in a safe, clean and creative environment!

We can't wait to open! Thanks to all the moms for your encouragement!

Kid-powered choo choos

We're so excited to offer our kids (3+) a way to a) ride the train b) get some exercise and c) have a whole lot of fun!! It's also a great way for parents to get some exercise as well (if you want to run after them as they go around and around the track). The train track is built inside the playscape in an enclosed area for extra added safety.

Watch out Thomas! Here we come!

She can sing, too

Wonderwild is proud to present our artist-in-residence Lisa Marie Godfrey. We think the world of her and can't wait to unveil her installation.

"Drawn from conventions of anime, underground comics and the pink-and-turquoise universe of fairy princess toys, Godfrey's angst is that of an adolescent, looking backwards at childhood through the lens of grown-up anxieties. It's the glass-unicorn effect, emphasizing the purity and fragility of childish innocence." - Bill Davenport

Lisa Marie Godfrey (born August 24, 1981) is an American dreamy-folk singer and fine artist based in Houston, TX, where she was born. She studied at The Glassel School of Art in Houston, where she focused on painting, drawing and printmaking. Her works on paper are often combined with small sculptures, found objects, and direct wall painting. She likes to create site specific installations where a personal narrative is always present whether speaking through self representational characters or dreamy landscapes.

Things from the past such as vintage cabinet card photographs, children's books, letters and postcards serve as inspiration as she tries to analyze and understand the past, present, her dreams and reality. Lisa has exhibited in Houston, Austin, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Ottawa and Montreal; and is scheduled for a solo show at Domy Books, Austin, December of 2009. Besides expressing herself visually, she is a self-taught guitarist and singer who started a solo music project titled Air Castle Mystery Solved in March of 2009. Her music has been described as "A cautious relief, like a foot in a cloud..." She is planning to release her first album in November of 2009.

See more of Lisa's work at http://www.lisamariegodfrey.com/.

Cheese, please!

Cheese flavored ice cream? What about a cheesy chocolate bar? Okay, well, if we can't have that, how about a big piece of cheese that the kids can play on? Right on!! Wonderwild will have a collection of equipment designed by child development experts and product designers. When you have a combination like that, it can only result in a lot of fun that's also educational!

Like Grandma's Feather Bed But Better

Who doesn't like jumping on a bed? When was the last time YOU jumped on a bed?!

Well, your chance to do it is coming up soon. We'll be the FIRST in Texas to install this inflatable bed-buster: the Jumpoline. Sort of like a trampoline and an inflatable combined. But it's better. With a trampoline it's difficult to get more than one person jumping without throwing off all the rest. With the Jumpoline, you can have multiple people of various sizes using it quite safely.

I've seen infants who can barely crawl sit on the Jumpoline laughing and giggling while their mothers bounced them up and down. It was the cutest sight.

The above is a picture of an outdoor version. Ours will be indoors and over 28 feet long.

Needless to say, it's going to be great fun for the kids--and a great work out for parents too!

Our Dreamscape of the Playscape

Castles in the air, playscapes in the sky! Our playsystem design is now being finalized by one of the top designers in the business who now lives in the UK. It will stand at 15 feet tall, not too tall to lose the kids, but high enough for them to feel like kings and queens.

Children will have two types of slides to come down off of the playscape, and inside, they'll find lots of challenges--climbing, jumping, running, crawling.

And to top it all off, we have the city's first indoor train track, where kids use their own energy to get each car to move on the tracks! It's a great way for kids to exercise and have fun at the same time.

We showed the images to a few kids and the response was unanimous--we all couldn't wait for the system to be built!