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FAMILY LEARNING AT THE CHILDREN'S MUSEUM OF CLEVELAND

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Happening in each Exhibit & bEYOND

Here we are addressing some of the skills your children may be developing while playing at The Children’s Museum of Cleveland. While is it difficult to list all the skills your child may be acquiring while actively engaging in play, we hope this will help highlight some of the important contributions play can make to your child’s development. Also included are some ideas for playing at home.

Learning and playing really do go hand in hand!

Splish! Splash!
During your Visit
Your child is exploring water flow, cause and effect, buoyancy and practicing fine motor skills while they play at the water table. At the weather station learn bout the seasons through dramatic play.

Ideas for Activities at Home
Turn your bathtub into a water exploration site. Create boats out of Styrofoam egg cartons, straws and paper. Put measuring cups, bowls, funnel, strainers in the water, or pick out a variety of house hold objects and make predictions if they will sink or float. Then test out your ideas.

Bridges to Our Community
During Your Visit
Your child is engaging in various creative play situations. From taking care of a sick baby at the Doctors office, to fixing a car the ideas for creative play are endless. During these varied situations they are practicing sorting, concentration, use of self-control, empathy, abstract thinking, language acquisition.

Ideas for Activities at Home
Make your children part of the grocery shopping experience. Give them $5 and a few of the cheaper things on your list. Help them make good choices while purchasing groceries.

Bake cookies with your children - have them measure, pour and mix. When you are done don’t forget to decorate you creations. This is a great introduction to basic math, science and art skills.

Big Red Barn
During your Visit
Your child uses basic math skills while sorting, grouping and classifying various types of fruits and vegetables and gross motor skills as they climb into the hayloft and go down the slide.

Ideas for Activities at Home
Have your children help sort out the laundry. They can separate out the darks, lights and colors. Then when everything is clean have them match up socks, separate shirts and pants. The laundry might take a little longer to do then if you did it yourself. However the skills they are practicing and the time spend together is priceless.