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 > >_________________________________________________________________ >Watch the online reality show Mixed Messages with a friend and >enter to win >a trip to NY >http://www.msnmessenger-download.click-url.com/go/onm00200497av e/direct/01/ ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes). ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).