Published: October 28, 2006 08:10 pm            

At the Museum

• For a museum without a building, Children’s Museum offers lots to do

There’s a lot going on at Stillwater Children’s Museum, even if the museum doesn’t yet have a building for it to be going on in.

Currently, students at two Stillwater schools, Highland Park and Will Rogers elementaries, are learning from the Museum Without Walls’ “Smart Start to Science and Literacy” program. Pre-kindergarten through second grade students, along with children at five public childcare sites, spend 30 minutes — most of them twice a week — learning about science, art and math from OSU work-study students.

The OSU students read a storybook to the children, then lead them in a hands-on activity related to the book, said Ruth Cavins, Stillwater Children’s Museum executive director.

In January, fifth and sixth grade students will get their own program in the Museum Without Walls, “Plant Virus Exploration.” The program will lead students to discover beneficial and detrimental aspects of viruses in horticulture, Cavins said.

“We’ll talk about the common cold and flu and how we get viruses and relate that to plants and how viruses spread in plants,” she said. “It really gets down to genetics.”

Students will have the opportunity to build models of viruses and will also build greenhouses in which they will be able to experiment with plant viruses with an infected group and a control group, she added.

Then, in April, students at Highland Park, Will Rogers and Skyline elementaries and their families can experience the life of pioneers through “Journey Back in Time.” The program, which will create pioneer settlements at each school, will also be presented at elementary schools in Cushing and Perkins and at Most Excellent Family Adventure ’07, hosted by Smart Start Payne County.

“Kids and their parents will be able to come in and do activities related to pioneer life, like churning butter and pulling wool,” Cavins said.

Stillwater Children’s Museum has also participated in the Juke Joint Jog, the Harvest Carnival, the OSU homecoming parade and the downtown Halloween Fest and has plans for a float in the Christmas parade.

In addition to these activities, the Children’s Museum has had a change of officers on its board — new officers are president Marcia Karns, president-elect Jana Phillips, treasurer Jason Pogue and secretary Beth Fulgenzi — and is preparing to begin a capital campaign in the spring to raise money for a building.

“Right now, we’re pushing to educate the community and businesses and the powers that be about the museum so when we begin the capital campaign, they already know who we are and why we’re doing this,” Cavins said.

The ultimate goal is $7 million to open the museum in a brand-new building by March 2010 and have the money to operate it for a year, she explained.

The board hopes to build the museum in the downtown area, Cavins said, adding that its purpose is to provide an “inexpensive spontaneous activity for families to engage in.”

“With the loss of the skating rink and go-karts, really family-oriented activities, you have to drive out of town for spontaneous activities,” she said.

        

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