This week, in honor of Youth Art Month, we will be hearing from Gina Moreland, Executive Director of Habitot Children’s Museum in Berkeley, California. The mission of Habitot Children’s Museum is ”to help the broad community of parents and caregivers raise curious, creative and confident children.” Underlying the Museum’s mission is the knowledge that, in the earliest years of life, [...]
Category Archives: Children’s Museums
Leveraging the Maker Movement
To Enhance Creativity in Children This week, our friend and guest blogger, Peter Chang, will tell us about his organization, Child Creativity Lab, and how they are leveraging the Maker Movement to enhance creativity in children. Be sure to check out Child Creativity Lab on the web to learn more about upcoming events and how you [...]
What’s this “Maker Movement” all about?
Defined as individuals or groups using discarded or broken materials to create something new, the Maker Movement first emerged into mainstream culture through Maker Faire, an event created by Make magazine to “celebrate arts, crafts, engineering, science projects and the Do-It-Yourself Mindset”. Since the first Maker Faire in 2006, the movement has grown beyond a [...]
Design For Autism : Part 2
In our first installment of Design for Autism, we talked a little bit about “Object in Content” and how the idea of “sameness” is important as we design the spaces that children with Autism would routinely visit. In this article, we will focus on dealing with “Impaired Sensory Integration as we design.” First a quick [...]
The Power of Intergenerational Play
Play is not just for children…or even just for humans. We have all seen our cats and dogs play with us and other pets, and studies have established that nonhuman primates engage in sophisticated play. Playful behavior has been observed in lizards, turtles, and birds – even fish have been shown to amuse themselves. As [...]
Journeys of Emergence and Reinvention
During the Association of Children’s Museums conference “ Interactivity 2014”, we had the opportunity to lead a fantastic session that dug into the struggles of building a brand new children’s museum from the ground up. This session began with a short documentary video (that we shot on our iPhones) featuring several of our industry friends, [...]
Sound Pod Prototype
Last week at ACM, we shared a prototype of our latest pre-designed experience for toddlers. The concept of TodPods, exhibits designed specifically for a museum’s youngest learners, has been in development for a while. As we visited children’s museums around the country, we noticed a trend – toddler areas were often an afterthought. Usually relegated [...]