Taiwan 2014 Day 3 - Baby Boss and Ximending
On our third day in Taipei, we rocked up to Baby Boss as they opened their doors at 10am and did not leave until they closed at 6pm!
Baby Boss is an indoor role-play theme park that is designed as a mini self-sufficient city of sorts.
Children get to role-play and try out an occupation at each station (about 30-40mins) which is limited to about 10-12 children. It is actually quite orderly and well-managed. At the end of each job, the children get a wage (10 Baby Boss dollars) for their hard work.
Parents have to be around to keep track of the schedule, direct their children to queue at the right venues (parents cannot queue on behalf of the children and once the quota is met, they will tell you), feed them if they are hungry or bring them to the toilet.
*Tip: Go to Baby Boss on a weekday because it is less crowded and you can stay the full day from 10am-6pm (weekends: you can only go in from 10am-3pm or 3-8pm).
The best part is, everything is conducted in Mandarin so it is an excellent Mandarin immersion crash course for our kantang kids :)
Sean (5yo) is just the right age and oh boy, did he relish the activities. Ryan (almost 3yo) tagged along with his brother even though I was pretty sure he had no idea what was going on most of the time because his Mandarin is atrocious.
Sean was so motivated by the prospect of earning money at each job he completed a grand total of 10 jobs non-stop from 10am to 6pm. I told him he could take a break if he was tired but he refused to because he said he wanted to earn more money so he didn't have to ask from us anymore. Famous last words, HAHA!
Here they are being sweet nurses tending to their babies. They changed diapers, cleaned belly buttons and soothed crying babies almost as big as them, haha.
They worked as young budding pilots. Gah, they looked so cute dressed up in the pilot uniforms and boarded the plane with their briefcases!
The young pilots sat in a simulation room to fly the plane while the stewards/stewardesses served the guests.
(Tip: When we were queueing up, I was quite puzzled why the steward/stewardesses slots filled up a lot faster than the pilots. Later, I realized the parents of the steward/stewardesses were allowed to board the plane and be served by their little ones and see all the action on the plane. So go for that if you are there!)
They worked as construction workers. They donned construction hats and made pictures using tile magnets and raked sand next to a cool mixer truck.
They were very excited to work as policemen because they wanted to 'catch and shoot bad guys'. Turned out they were traffic policemen (you should have seen their disappointed faces when they realized there would be no shooting involved, haha).
Our smart little policemen learned how to use their baton to stop and direct traffic and put their skills to good use.
The boys also had fun being paramedics. They learned how to treat the sick and injured. They rode in a real ambulance and set out to save an injured boy (a doll), put on a neck brace and bandaged him, put him on a stretcher and brought him to the hospital.
So proud of Sean who did such a marvelous job! (Ryan was very exhausted and grumpy at this stage and we had to pull him out.)
Next, Sean tried his hand at being an archaeologist. He dug for dinosaur fossils and opened the coffin of a mummy! He said he was terrified but it was fun. (Ryan knocked out for a long nap at this point.)
Sean was also an artist. This station was a bit of a dud because the children were just given crayons and asked to draw a picture.
Then, Sean became an astronaut and went to the moon. They put on spacesuits, took a spaceship to the moon, walked the surface of the moon and collected moon rocks and came back to Earth. Really cute!
Then Sean became a firefighter, the one dream job they were eyeing the entire day (it is *very* popular)! They attended a briefing, slid down the fireman pole and rode out in a fire engine to put out a building on fire.
Lots of fun and action for the little ones :)
Their last job of the day: petrol attendants. They loved this job! They learnt how to welcome cars to the petrol kiosk, ask which grade of petrol the drivers wanted, pump petrol, clean the car and collect money. So cute!
And that was our day in Baby Boss. There were other jobs we didn't try out - such as soldier (the boys would have loved this), chef, surgeon, dentist, etc. Maybe next time!
As a treat for the boys' hard work, we let them buy something from the gift shop with their day's earnings :)
For dinner, we headed to Ximending. We walked around for a bit, had some cheap and goodAh Zhong Mian Xian (noodles in broth with pork innards) on the street and bittergourd juice (which was actually quite pleasant) before heading back to the hotel. Phew!
PS. Read about our first trip to Baby Boss when Sean was 3 (2013) here.
Baby Boss is an indoor role-play theme park that is designed as a mini self-sufficient city of sorts.
Children get to role-play and try out an occupation at each station (about 30-40mins) which is limited to about 10-12 children. It is actually quite orderly and well-managed. At the end of each job, the children get a wage (10 Baby Boss dollars) for their hard work.
Parents have to be around to keep track of the schedule, direct their children to queue at the right venues (parents cannot queue on behalf of the children and once the quota is met, they will tell you), feed them if they are hungry or bring them to the toilet.
*Tip: Go to Baby Boss on a weekday because it is less crowded and you can stay the full day from 10am-6pm (weekends: you can only go in from 10am-3pm or 3-8pm).
The best part is, everything is conducted in Mandarin so it is an excellent Mandarin immersion crash course for our kantang kids :)
Sean (5yo) is just the right age and oh boy, did he relish the activities. Ryan (almost 3yo) tagged along with his brother even though I was pretty sure he had no idea what was going on most of the time because his Mandarin is atrocious.
Sean was so motivated by the prospect of earning money at each job he completed a grand total of 10 jobs non-stop from 10am to 6pm. I told him he could take a break if he was tired but he refused to because he said he wanted to earn more money so he didn't have to ask from us anymore. Famous last words, HAHA!
Here they are being sweet nurses tending to their babies. They changed diapers, cleaned belly buttons and soothed crying babies almost as big as them, haha.
They worked as young budding pilots. Gah, they looked so cute dressed up in the pilot uniforms and boarded the plane with their briefcases!
The young pilots sat in a simulation room to fly the plane while the stewards/stewardesses served the guests.
(Tip: When we were queueing up, I was quite puzzled why the steward/stewardesses slots filled up a lot faster than the pilots. Later, I realized the parents of the steward/stewardesses were allowed to board the plane and be served by their little ones and see all the action on the plane. So go for that if you are there!)
They worked as construction workers. They donned construction hats and made pictures using tile magnets and raked sand next to a cool mixer truck.
They were very excited to work as policemen because they wanted to 'catch and shoot bad guys'. Turned out they were traffic policemen (you should have seen their disappointed faces when they realized there would be no shooting involved, haha).
Our smart little policemen learned how to use their baton to stop and direct traffic and put their skills to good use.
The boys also had fun being paramedics. They learned how to treat the sick and injured. They rode in a real ambulance and set out to save an injured boy (a doll), put on a neck brace and bandaged him, put him on a stretcher and brought him to the hospital.
So proud of Sean who did such a marvelous job! (Ryan was very exhausted and grumpy at this stage and we had to pull him out.)
Next, Sean tried his hand at being an archaeologist. He dug for dinosaur fossils and opened the coffin of a mummy! He said he was terrified but it was fun. (Ryan knocked out for a long nap at this point.)
Sean was also an artist. This station was a bit of a dud because the children were just given crayons and asked to draw a picture.
Then, Sean became an astronaut and went to the moon. They put on spacesuits, took a spaceship to the moon, walked the surface of the moon and collected moon rocks and came back to Earth. Really cute!
Then Sean became a firefighter, the one dream job they were eyeing the entire day (it is *very* popular)! They attended a briefing, slid down the fireman pole and rode out in a fire engine to put out a building on fire.
Lots of fun and action for the little ones :)
Their last job of the day: petrol attendants. They loved this job! They learnt how to welcome cars to the petrol kiosk, ask which grade of petrol the drivers wanted, pump petrol, clean the car and collect money. So cute!
And that was our day in Baby Boss. There were other jobs we didn't try out - such as soldier (the boys would have loved this), chef, surgeon, dentist, etc. Maybe next time!
As a treat for the boys' hard work, we let them buy something from the gift shop with their day's earnings :)
For dinner, we headed to Ximending. We walked around for a bit, had some cheap and goodAh Zhong Mian Xian (noodles in broth with pork innards) on the street and bittergourd juice (which was actually quite pleasant) before heading back to the hotel. Phew!
PS. Read about our first trip to Baby Boss when Sean was 3 (2013) here.