The Kansas Children’s Discovery Center will procure and install three exhibitions to provide new experiences related to STEAM learning for children up to age 11, as well as their teachers and families. The museum will add a large color wheel and giant pixel peg board to the paint gallery. They will replace the existing Bernoulli table—which demonstrates how low pressure creates lift or fast-moving air creates low pressure—with a new, more engaging version. The new exhibitions will expand arts and science learning experiences for visitors, spark an interest in learning, and ignite a desire to study STEAM-related fields.
The Children’s Museum will collaborate with six Hartford Public Library branches, three Hartford Family Centers, and the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center to provide hands-on Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) - based programs to over 1,000 local 3 to 14-year old children and their care givers. Program design and development will include planning for field trips to the museum. All participants will be given age-specific, supplemental STEAM materials to continue their learning activities at home, and families can attend more than one week of library programs, or more than three Saturdays of family center programs. The goal will be to help urban Hartford youths find new pathways toward responsible citizenry and fiscal stability.
The Nest: A Nature Inspired Space, Design Workshop, and Art Studio is a new project of the Massachusetts Audubon Society’s Museum of American Bird Art designed to provide a dedicated space and robust mobile component for pre-K to grade 5 aged children, their families, and educators. Working with community partners, the museum will create an interactive exhibition integrating nature, art, and science, using existing underutilized space at the museum. The project team will test and develop prototypes of content, materials, and equipment for the Nest, along with curriculum and programmatic activities. Through the immersive exhibition and supporting programmatic activities, the museum will better serve an expanded group of learners with nature-based STEAM programs.
KID Museum will develop and test a framework for working with community organizations to design learning experiences and create a facilitation guide for integrating cultural appreciation with maker-based learning. Building on its established Cultural Days programming, the museum will partner with four organizations that represent the region's largest ethnic populations. Together, they will plan, design, prototype, and refine new programs and experiences for children ages 4 to 14 and their families. The project team will adapt an IMLS-funded STEM-expert co-development model to develop and present cultural programs both at the museum and in the community. The project team will evaluate and refine the programs through visitor surveys. The museum will share the resulting framework and facilitation guide with other informal learning spaces to support the implementation of similar programs.
The Portland Children’s Museum will open a new exhibition, “Drip City,” which focuses on water as a precious natural resource that has shaped the region’s geography, weather, and culture. Following an IMLS-funded evaluation and design process, the museum will engage a local fabrication company to construct and install exhibit components that explore concepts in science, engineering, and art. The museum will also engage community members in the design and testing of associated programs that target families and children ages 0 to 7. Museum staff will evaluate all exhibit elements to ensure they are working properly, accessible as intended, and making children’s learning visible to adult audiences.
The Children's Museum of the Upstate will expand its STEAM outreach programming to benefit both teachers and students in the Greenville County Schools. The museum will serve 2,000 students through STEAM programs held on-site at their elementary schools, with a focus on curriculum areas where standardized test scores indicate that students are struggling. A new program for preschoolers will be piloted in the school district's six child development centers. The pre-school classes will visit the museum for a field trip that includes free exploration time and a tailored storytime lesson. The museum will also present four teacher workshops reaching 400 educators to assist them in teaching STEAM topics. An independent evaluator will conduct an evaluation of the outreach programming and develop assessment tools to help determine how the curriculum can support student achievement and result in improved standardized test scores.
The New Children's Museum will launch the LAByrinth project to engage the community in the creation of a permanent art installation. The museum will convene a cross-disciplinary team to design and build the LAByrinth, a climbing structure that will serve 140,000 people annually. The museum will develop relationships with underserved families and current and future museum users, and also create an ongoing community-based exhibition development process to create sustainable mechanisms for continued community involvement. The project will introduce a new socially-engaged process for creating exhibitions, which will serve as a sustainable creative catalyst for San Diego families.
Children feed alphabet letters to a talking baby dragon, drive a New York City fire truck, paint on a six-foot art wall, and crawl through a challenge course in PlayWorks™ at the Children's Museum of Manhattan (CMOM) in New York. Manhattan’s largest public play and learning center for early childhood marries the skills that children need to succeed in kindergarten with fun stuff that kids love. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded the project through a 2006 Museums for America grant to support the museum as a center of community engagement and lifelong learning. “PlayWorks™ is a joyful place for learning science, math, reading and other things. We incorporate fun and learning into the whole design to create a scaffold of learning. Families come to the museum to supplement preschool experiences,” said Andy S. Ackerman, CMOM’s executive director. The museum also offers parents, sitters, and other care-providers guidance on engaging their children with the exhibit. Based on the concept that children’s learning and personal growth is rooted in play, the 4,000-square-foot space is divided into five learning areas: Language, Math and Physics, Arts and Science, Imagination and Dramatic Play, and Practice Play (for infants and crawlers).