Kids have complete control of a world usually firmly under their parents’ management. Photo: Eureka!

If it often seems like all you do is tell your kids what to do all the time, you might be due a break at Eureka! in Halifax, the UK. This innovative museum turns parenting on its head; the kids do the discovering and the parents do the watching and listening.

So it was that at 10am on a sunny Wednesday, we entered Marks & Spencer’s food department. The façade of the shop was the same, the usual bright marketing pictures were up on the wall and the beep of a cash register emanated through the store.

But Eureka! had sent us down the rabbit hole; everything was miniature, from the trolley which was careening down the aisles in front of my four-year-old, to the checkout, currently manned by a sturdy child with bobbing ringlets.

The kids descended on the produce like locusts. Joints of plastic beef were tossed into the trolley, then a dozen leeks and a pint of milk. The checkout child sighed and wiped her brow as she rang them up.

We spent some time sniffing different food types down long sensory hoses before lifting the pictures to see what they were and throwing them into our baskets. The delight of my one-year-old at being able to select whatever she wanted from the shelves was boundless.

And then, through a convenient hole in the shop wall, we transitioned seamlessly to the kitchen. Soon the beef was simmering in a pretend pot under the watchful eye of a toddler in a chef’s hat who was barking instructions like a miniature Gordon Ramsay.

Another half turn and we were in a garage, wearing overalls and fixing the family sedan using a jack and mechanical spanner. It was eerie; the kids had complete control of a world that was usually firmly under my management.

Halifax might seem like an unusual location for this kind of National Children’s Museum. It’s not the most picturesque of British towns, with its crumbling industrial heritage built on cotton and wool.

But Eureka! was conceived and opened by Prince Charles in 1992 next to the railway station as part of a regeneration effort. This temple of learning through play has attracted millions of children ever since.

Initially it had been difficult to get the kids through the museum door. Immediately outside is an inspired playground with an island beach sand pit, balancing games and a section where they could create huge bugs with giant puzzle pieces.

A few hours at Eureka! and I found myself several years lighter

Having wrestled them inside though, the tables were turned. I found myself being literally dragged through the jungle exhibit as my son ferreted under fake leaves for animals and worked out how a volcano erupted. We passed through a rubber strip door and were plunged into the darkness of night in the desert, lit only by thousands of pinpricks stars, reflected into the infinity of our universe by a clever system of mirrors.

In the Desert Discovery gallery for under-fives, the phone rang. The kids, used to mobiles and Skype, gawped at it for a while until one brave toddler picked it up.

“Hello?” he queried uncertainly. Standing behind him on the other line, I asked him whether he could deliver pizza. Not missing a beat, he confirmed that he could. We had a long discussion about what kind of pizza I might require and he hung up with assurances that it would be ready in 10 minutes.

Once the other kids caught on that they could also ring the phone at will and have another child pick up, there was a queue for the phone box and a series of hilarious earnest toddler phone calls.

One of the exhibits required co-operation. In order to have foam balls drop into a basket for everyone to play with, one child needed to drop fresh balls into a conveyor belt bucket across the room while another cranked a handle to raise the belt. Just watching them working it out was an education.

By the time we hit the All About Me gallery, everyone was starting to suffer from sensory overload. Nevertheless, we gamely tested our reaction times, photographically aged ourselves, investigated the contents of our mouth and processed a few newborn babies at the doctors (a precocious paediatrician could summon the waiting child by intercom for weighing and vaccinations), but we were running out of steam and lunch beckoned.

As we transitioned out of the gallery, we passed Archimedes, who originated the word ‘Eureka’. He now bathes beneath the museum ceiling every 30 minutes to prove his own point that a body does displace an equal amount of water to its mass.

Below him was an exhibit on wave power which got everyone predictably wet before we managed to direct our party out through the shop and into one of the picnic tents to refuel (we skipped the cafe in the interests of economy).

You might think that the few hours you spend in the museum just keeps the kids busy, but Eureka! is at pains to explain why this kind of play is so important. They quote Gretchen Owocki, an American educationalist who said, “as astronauts and space travellers, children puzzle over the future; as dinosaurs and princesses they unearth the past. As weather reporters and res­taurant workers, they make sense of reality; as monsters and gremlins they make sense of the unreal”.

Play is not a ‘nice to have’, it’s a necessity, and the museum aims to help us all find different ways to explore it.

As for us adults, the museum’s motto is borrowed from George Bernard Shaw: “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

A few hours at Eureka! and I found myself several years lighter. Plus the kids took a long and peaceful nap in the afternoon, giving mummy time to play. It’s hard to find fault with that kind of day.

Getting there: Ryanair flies to Leeds-Bradford direct every Thursday and Sunday. The airport is approximately 25km from Halifax.

Entrance: €12.95 for adults and children over three (€4.45 ages one to two, free under one).

www.eureka.org.uk