What kid or parent for that matter doesn’t love the Children’s Museum? It has all the creativity, learning and excitement all under one roof, it’s entertainment for the entire day and family! It’s that special place in Portland where your child’s imagination can just run wild. Which is exactly the idea behind their newest exhibit, Storyland: A Trip Through Childhood Favorites.
Storyland features seven different books and brings each of them to life, allowing your child not only to read each book, but to actually experience them. From the moment you first enter Storyland, you are greeted by a giant mouse with a cookie, from the book If You Give A Mouse A Cookie and it only gets better from there. The Museum has done such a wonderful job in creating an atmosphere that promotes not only literacy, but fun. Which is exactly the goal of this exhibit.
With each of the seven books you are invited to participate within that book. At the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom area, they have created a palm tree with moving parts where kids can match lower and upper case letters. Kids can then wander to the book Abuela where they have created a walk through of the Statue of Liberty, with the word welcome in numerous different languages. The classic book Peter Rabbit is there too, with an adorable tree stump, with Peter’s bed, lit fireplace and kitchen all for your child to explore. Snowy Day is interactive with dress-up and a lit up walk way that when your child walks on it, makes the crunching sound as if you are actually walking in the snow.
From word play, to drawing, to writing and creating, Storyland is a new and creative way to get us active within the world of books. Literacy is so important for our children and it is represented so well by the Children’s Museum. The Museum has done a fantastic job with this exhibit and bringing these seven stories to life and making them powerful and memorable.
The Storyland exhibit is truly extraordinary in the fact that it is giving us the opportunity to read each book and really explore the intricacies of each, both with play and interaction.
I found kids running from exhibit to exhibit trying everything out in a bit of a frenzy, since there is so much to see and do. But what is really being accomplished, is that kids are learning and enjoying themselves at the same time, and maybe they will take away from Storyland that a book is more than words on a paper, it is a land to be discovered and where your imagination can be free.
You can travel to the world of books with the Children’s Museum’s exhibit Storyland now through May 5, 2013. Please visit http://www.portlandcm.org/ for more information.
