CMoR is ALWAYS in the news! To receive our monthly press releases, click here!

CHILDREN’S MUSEUM OF RICHMOND TO OPEN NEW EXHIBIT, CMOR TOWN SQUARE, ON OCTOBER 4, 2008

Richmond, VA (July 30, 2008) – The Children’s Museum of Richmond (CMoR) announced plans to open a new permanent 3,000 square foot indoor exhibit, CMoR Town Square, on Saturday, October 4, 2008. Special activities and entertainment will be featured throughout the day in celebration.

“We are thrilled to offer an entirely new exhibit space specifically designed to inspire pretend play,” said Karen Coltrane, CMoR’s president and CEO. “We are grateful, too, to the sponsors and donors who have made this vision possible. Their gifts will provide a special place that will become a part of the memory and experiences of virtually every child in Central Virginia.”

Seven newly designed venues, including a hospital, bank, schoolhouse, grocery store with café, garage, television station and shadow park will form the CMoR Town Square exhibit. This engaging space, designed with a distinctive Richmond flare (including a child-sized monument of Seymour, the museum’s mascot), will replace three exhibits that became outdated when the museum’s audience was redefined to serve children birth to eight years old. Each venue will present museum visitors with the apparatus and work environment of a particular profession and will reinforce developmentally appropriate learning activities including color identification, counting, sorting, and early literacy recognition. Above all, CMoR Town Square will encourage children and their caretakers to engage in dramatic play and role-playing, which research shows greatly enhances the development of social skills, creative problem-solving, and imaginative thinking.

“We believe a key ingredient for learning is play”, said Whitney Cardozo, director of education and exhibits for the museum. “The CMoR Town Square exhibit is designed with children’s interests in mind and provides opportunities for children to practice skills, make choices and develop an understanding about the worlds around them. It encourages children and families to have fun while exploring and learning together.”

Each venue in CMoR Town Square is designed to promote imaginative play by recreating real world environments that are child-sized and completely hands-on. Such play is particularly important in helping children develop self-regulation, one of the best predictors of later success in school.

Schoolhouse

The whimsical one-room schoolhouse venue will have all the ingredients for playing school. Chalkboards, charts, maps, pointers, desks and a flagpole support high quality, imaginative play. Children will role-play, plan and extend pretend scenarios in the school. This venue promotes underlying skills necessary for learning in school and beyond. Children will role-play by pretending to be both teachers and students, which contributes to foundational skills and literacy development for successful academic learning.

Bank

The Bank will allow young visitors to encounter familiar spaces, including a deposit counter and teller’s window, in a child-sized, hands-on environment. The venue will also contain elements that may be less familiar like a vault and ATM. These features expand a child’s conception of a bank, while providing additional counting and sorting opportunities and encouraging activities that develop fine and gross motor skills.

Garage

Children will step into a pretend auto shop equipped with all the tools they need to perform maintenance on a child-sized car mounted on a lift. This venue’s hands-on activities encourage cooperative play and stimulate the development of fundamental skills in young children. Children will have fun sorting, matching and problem-solving as they select tools, replace parts and fill work orders. Working with other mechanics encourages positive social skills and the venue’s activities help enhance fine and gross motor skills.

Grocery Store & Café

The opportunity to play in the Grocery Store and Café allows children to express ideas and feelings in the way most natural to them. It also gives them and their caregivers a real world environment to interact through role-playing, making the experience richer and giving it even more impact. CMoR has studied the way children have used the existing U-Shop Market, as well as drawn on other children’s museums that currently include a grocery store venue, to develop specific components of a new space that includes scanner counters, deli counter, music system, food bins with age appropriate labeling, working weight scale, café tables and chairs, kitchen set and counter, pretend microphone and aroma canister. These components, in addition to props such as child-sized aprons, menu pads, grocery baskets and food encourage role-playing by realistically reproducing a grocery store and café environments.

Television Station

This particular venue includes a pretend video studio in which children could work both sides of the camera. A news desk, real television camera, scripts and control station would allow children to plan their news broadcast including sound effects and digital imaging. Children will be able to see themselves as the stars of the scene on monitors, while they are immersed in the experience of communicating news. To be as authentic as possible, the space will include a dramatic backdrop of downtown Richmond, video camera, monitor, teleprompter and props and costumes, giving children the unique opportunity to see themselves on television and to gain a new level of understanding and interest in communication production.

Hospital & Ambulance

Visiting the doctor at a clinic or emergency room setting can be a stressful, anxiety-producing experience for many children. The opportunity to play in the Hospital and Ambulance venue allows them to express these feelings through role-playing, while becoming familiar with the sequence of events during a visit to the hospital or doctor’s office.

CMoR has worked with other children’s museums that currently include medical exhibits to develop specific components of the Clinic and Ambulance venue which include:

  • Ambulance with gurney, movable steering wheel, and mounted dials and gauges for monitoring a patient’s conditions;
  • Check-in Desk with telephone, computer mock-up, and clipboard;
  • Examining Room with sink for hand washing, examination table, and light box for looking at real x-rays.

These components, in addition to props such as child-sized lab coats, stethoscopes, and prescription pads, encourage role-playing by realistically reproducing a hospital environment. Other elements such as an eye chart helps builds early literacy skills and letter recognition and a height charts that develops initial understanding of measurement.

Shadow Park

A whimsical park setting surrounds three interactive screens that inspire children to use their shadows in fun ways to interact with insects, balloons and rain.

The entire CMoR Town Square exhibit was designed and built by Chicago Scenic Studios, Inc.

Established in 1978, CSSI grew out of founder Bob Doepel’s concept of a company that would design and build theatrical scenery in Chicago’s growing off-Loop theater community. While its roots remain in theater, CSSI has evolved into a full-service organization that teams with clients to design and fabricate custom environments and unforgettable experiences. CSSI regularly creates ideas and brings them to life for corporate events, themed retail and environments, custom tradeshow exhibits, museum environments, special events, theatre and television. Celebrating 30 years of commitment to creativity and innovation, Chicago Scenic continues to be an industry leader.

“One of the reasons we wanted to work on CMoR Town Square is that it’s a great extension to our strong portfolio of children’s attractions. Some of the kid-focused projects we’ve worked on – a two-story tree house for the Notebaert Nature Museum, a storytelling interior of the Kohl Story Bus, dreaming up Santastic™, a new way to experience Santa Claus – have all been opportunities for us to redefine experiences for kids. In that same way, we thought CMoR Town Square offered the opportunity to create something that appeals to kids, captures their attention, and encourages interaction and learning in new and different ways,” said Diane Langhorst, director of marketing for CSSI.

Activities planned for the grand opening of CMoR Town Square on Saturday, October 4 include face-painting, moon bounce, special appearances by Seymour the Dinosaur, storytime readings throughout the day, balloon-giveaways and more. For more information, please call (804) 474-7000.

HISTORY OF THE CHILDREN’S MUSEUM OF RICHMOND

In 1981, well-respected civic and community volunteer Sara Farber Markham founded the Richmond Children’s Museum on the site of the former Navy Hill School on North Sixth Street. Her vision was to create a museum for children that would encourage them to become engaged in the arts through interactive exhibits and participatory activities. In 1997, the museum changed its name to the Children’s Museum of Richmond.

In 2000, having outgrown the site at Navy Hill, the Children’s Museum of Richmond relocated to its new 48,000 square foot location on Broad Street adjacent to the Science Museum of Virginia. Since that time, CMoR has been visited by over one million visitors and in 2005 become the permanent home to another Richmond icon, Legendary Santa.

The Children’s Museum of Richmond’s mission is to enrich the lives of children, youth, families, and those who care for them by providing fun, interactive educational experiences that stimulate discovery, learning, and understanding about themselves and their world.

Based on that mission, the museum’s engaging learning environments create an integrated, multi-sensory experience and explore the central theme: “Me, My Community, and My World.” The environments help a child recognize and build on what is familiar and allow them to make connections between their own experiences, the people and places that surround them, and the world beyond their community. CMoR’s exhibits are designed to foster creative, unstructured play and discovery.

The learning environments interpret the natural, built, and expressive elements of the world around us and encourage visitors to discover the connections between the three. The exhibits are hands-on and fun and weave learning concepts from the Virginia’s Standards of Learning, NAEYC Standards and Virginia’s Foundation Blocks of Early Learning.

In addition to self-guided hands-on activities in its learning environments, the museum offers formal and informal programs and SOL-based curriculum-related classes for school groups, performances, workshops, demonstrations, summer camps, parent/child activities and special events which support the mission and serve a diverse audience.

CITY OF RICHMOND SCHOOL BOARD HONORS CHILDREN’S MUSEUM OF RICHMOND!

Richmond, VA (December 6, 2007) – The Children’s Museum of Richmond was recognized as an outstanding community partner by the City of Richmond School Board at its December 3 meeting.

This award recognizes the Children’s Museum for making educational programs possible for Richmond Public School’s (RPS) early elementary school students. Specifically, Deborah Jewell-Sherman, superintendent of Richmond Public Schools, noted that the museum had offered their school children important educational opportunities such as the A.G. Edwards Pennywise Kids Program, which brought 800 RPS first graders to the museum for three visits focused on economic education. She also noted the new program planned for this year with support from the Genworth Foundation, which will introduce RPS children to the multi-cultural richness of the Richmond community.

To receive the complete press release, click here!

BLOOMINGDALE’S WINDOW DISPLAYS ARRIVE AT THE CHILDREN’S MUSEUM OF RICHMOND!

This season, the Children’s Museum of Richmond is adding another dash of holiday magic to its seasonal lineup. Window displays from Bloomingdale’s flagship store on Lexington Avenue in New York City will now entertain families as they wait in line for Legendary Santa. The displays will be open to the public beginning Friday, November 23, 2007 when Legendary Santa comes down the chimney!

Elaborate window displays have been a New York holiday tradition since the early 1930s and the annual unveiling of the Bloomingdale’s windows is eagerly awaited by many New Yorkers. The recently acquired displays have a vintage look, but first appeared at Bloomingdale’s in 2003. In one vignette, a family gathers in a Victorian living room to trim the tree and sing carols. In another, a couple races across a snowy landscape in a horse-drawn sleigh. Figures are ¾ life-size, and each vignette is displayed inside a sparking red and gold frame.

To receive the complete press release, click here!

FIRST CENTRAL VIRGINIA HEART GALLERY TO DEBUT AT CHILDREN’S MUSEUM OF RICHMOND

The Central Virginia Heart Gallery Committee announced the launch of the region’s first Heart Gallery, a traveling portrait exhibit featuring area children available for adoption.

The exhibit, featuring the artistic talents of local photographers, will debut at the Children’s Museum of Richmond September 19 through November 15, and move to other venues throughout the region over the next year.

To receive the complete press release, click here! To find out more about adoption procedures in Virginia, call 1-800-DO-ADOPT or click here!

CHILDREN’S MUSEUM OF RICHMOND ANNOUNCES NEW CEO AND RECORD BREAKING YEAR!

The Board of Trustees of the Children’s Museum of Richmond announced today that Karen Coltrane will become the museum’s president and CEO, replacing Randy Wyckoff, who is retiring after nearly four years in the position. In addition, the museum is also celebrating record levels of attendance, admission revenue, membership sales and donations to its scholarship fund.

To receive the complete press release, click here!

CLEARWIRE WIRELESS BROADBAND LAUNCHES SERVICE IN RICHMOND AND SPONSORS 1,000 AREA SCHOOL CHILDREN TO TAKE PART IN WRITING FIELD TRIPS AT THE CHILDREN’S MUSEUM!

“Clearwire is changing the way Richmond residents and businesses connect online and with one another. We are offering the best of all worlds – a simple connection process coupled with exceptional customer service and portability,” said Timothy Payne, Clearwire’s general manger for Richmond.

The company also announced a new partnership with the Children’s Museum of Richmond, which includes the donation of 25 laptops with Clearwire service to create Write On!, a new computer-based field trip program at the museum designed to inspire elementary school writers to explore creative writing and to inform them about identifying reliable sources on the Internet in a safe and protected manner. Clearwire is also proud to sponsor 1,000 Richmond school children who will get the opportunity to experience the museum’s newest field trip program at no cost.

To receive the complete press release, click here!