The Juneau-Douglas City Museum is a small local museum that installed a
hands-on room two years ago. The room is seasonal, up only for the winter
and aimed at a young audience (in the summer the room is used to show a
video for the tourists.) It divides up into four sections: a dress-up area
with vintage clothes (fur hats, lace-up shoes, button robes, miner's
headlamps etc.), a schoolroom area with an old fashioned school desk, slate
boards, an abacus, a local timeline, coloring pages related to local
history, copies of old report cards from the collections etc), a kitchen
area (vintage kitchen queen cupboard, old spice tins, coffee grinder, soft
sculpture food, old ice cream maker etc) and finally a toys and games area
with a stereoviewer, a wooden ferryboat toy with removable cars, games like
a Jacob's Ladder or ball-in-cup, fur touchboard with matching game, relief
rubbing block, and so on. On the walls we try to put artwork from the
collections and reuse reproduction images and text from old exhibits or
repro ads from old newspapers. Games like "Eye-Spy" are available to carry
through the museum galleries, and there are big tins of toys like plastic
farm animals, American Bricks, Lincoln Logs and other vintage toys that can
be brought out with parental supervision. Essentially, anything hands-on
from our education collection or things people wanted to donated but had
poor provenance were fair game. We also have an old library card catalog
that was reused as a matching game with old and new things in the drawers.
Among the things we're hoping to add are a scale with weights and some large
old padlocks with keys. We set up the room with a lot of things we already
had for less than $5,000 including staff time, thanks to a grant from the
Alaska State Museum.
Hope this stimulates some ideas. I can send an inventory list if anyone is
interested. We have only had one or two small items disappear (a soft
sculpture strawberry, for example) and the expected wear and tear on the
clothes. Each year word of mouth grows among parents and we get a lot of
repeat visitors. Schoolkids who come with tours often bring their parents
back. Adults without kids can often be found in there, too.
Ellen Carrlee
Curator of Collections and Exhibits
Juneau-Douglas City Museum
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Beth Clark [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2004 5:42 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Hands-on Discovery Center
>
>
>Hello.
>
>I am working at a history museum and we want to start a
>hands-on discovery
>center for all ages. It would span from the Native Americans
>until present.
> If any one has such an area and has had success with certain
>activities, I
>would love to hear them. Also, any sources that were useful
>for finding
>activities would be helpful.
>
>Thank you.
>
>Beth Clark
>
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