WATERLOO -- Step into the time machine.

Set the date and grab hold as the "craft" shudders and shakes. The doors open at your "destination," where you can crawl through a dark cave to study pictographs, then make your own rock paintings or study Egyptian hieroglyphics and make a cartouche.

It's one of many adventurous and fun interactive exhibits being installed at the Phelps Youth Pavilion. The newly constructed $4.7 million, three-floor children's art museum is a long-awaited addition the the Waterloo Center for the Arts.

Visitors will also find digital painting, a staircase that's part maze, part jungle gym, a Tap-Tap Taxi, a drum dance pad that lets kids make calypso sounds of a steel drum with their feet, a tractor that allows kids to navigate a tractor through the rolling plains of Grant Wood paintings, a milk cow and many other experiential exhibits.

Installation began in January, after a postponement in December which forced WCA to postpone the opening date. Interactive Group from Triad Architects constructed exhibits in their Louisiana workshop and traveled to Waterloo for installation.

Their work is now complete. "It's up to staff install the rest of the exhibits and do the finishing touches," said Cammie Scully, WCA director. "The staff is putting in some long hours and having as much fun in the galleries as we hope children will have. The time machine is fantastic -- everyone who steps into it giggles. Every one of the interactive components is wonderful. To see all these concepts and ideas realized and working is beyond my expectations."

Phelps Youth Pavilion is at the forefront of children's art museums. "Not only is this concept new to Iowa, it is nationally significant. Nowhere else is close to doing what we're doing here. Some art centers are installing children's areas, but there aren't any museums totally devoted to children's art. Interactive's architect Paul Haynes, who designs exhibits for museums across the country, told me we are ahead of the curve," Scully explained.

Recently, the Pavilion received a Building of America Award and will be featured in the Fall 2008 Real Estate & Construction Review, Central Plains Edition. Just 38 projects will receive the award in this region.

The Pavilion marks the return of the nationally-acclaimed Junior Art Gallery, which spent 40 years in the WCA basement and served more than 15,000 school children each year. The children's art museum includes three interactive spaces, a permanent collection gallery to expand exhibition space, an education wing with a ceramics studio, visual arts studio, digital arts lab, and Art's Workshop, a storefront gift store, the Art House Cafe and collection management facilities to properly handle a collection that has completely outgrown its storage and handling space.

No public opening date has been set, although the first school groups begin arriving the first week in February. That will be a sort of "shake-down" of exhibits before doors open to the public, Scully said.

"It's hard work, some late nights, but we're having fun. We've all taken turns playing in the different galleries," confessed Bonnie Winninger, education director.

There have been few hiccups in the installation process, with one notable exception. "There is an Animatronic teacher in the Grant's Farm experiential gallery that works fine but her face was too scary -- even for adults," Scully said, laughing. "Her head has gone back to get a new face."