Hello Museum

In the great museum
there was a green room from a book
that we all read
about a moon.


I've tried to continue the rhyme but my brain is slow this evening. I can rhyme "musical instruments" but not with anything we saw at Connecticut Children's Museum in New Haven.

The museum itself is only open to the public for shortened hours on weekends--they don't open until noon on Saturdays, which is strange until you realize that their main audiences are school field trips. In fact, each gallery has tons of free floor space for a large class. And every gallery has a theme--music, interpersonal skills, mathematics, nature--with different stations in each for small group experimentation. I can just hear elementary school teachers ordering tours by the standards. I didn't see an "art" room, but might have missed it--or maybe no one needs to meet art standards? Or they go down the street to Yale.

The kiddos had a blast. Buddy loved the music room with its drums and xylophone. Sis liked making chimes out of CDs and bells and colored tape for each of us. The math room found Bud enjoying the gears wall and ball maze wall, while Sis played accountant complete with hat. We then moved to a room with a dollhouse-like cityscape mounted on the wall--office, apartment, hospital, street level, sewer level, subway level. Sis flew airplanes--airplanes driven by a Granny figurine--through the whole thing. Mama took pictures as we were inspired to consider making something similar someday.

We moved upstairs into a room with books on bears, monkeys, and frogs, each represented by a strikingly white, large, 3-D paper pop-up like statue. The bear section even had a blueberry bush, with velcro balls, to reconstruct Blueberries for Sal, one of their favorites and mine from my own childhood. Sis enjoyed feeding the blueberries to the other critters, namely the monkeys. I was in charge of feeding the monkeys (each section had little stuffed animals and all sorts of books about the animal. I was glad to see that we ad a lot of the books already, like Brown Bear, Bear Snores On, I Am A Little Bear, etc . . . ). Eventually, we moved on to the construction room (great wheelbarrows!) and the nature room (where Sis had a ladybug tea).

But the best room by far was the Great Green Room of Goodnight, Moon fame. In one large room, they have completely recreated (albeit with two walls switched) the setting of that famous story down to the paintings on the walls, the toys in the bookshelves, the triangularly folded blanket on the bed, and even the arrow curtain rods. The phone even rings! Bud's favorite part was the actual red balloon up at the ceiling. Sis liked getting in and out of the bed and pretending to be asleep. She also played with all the toys. And both of them recited huge sections of the book unprompted. What other children's book could you so completely and fully reproduce and experience? It's perfection. And it accomplished its mission of creating a book experience--we talked about being in Goodnight, Moon for the rest of the day. And then read it altogether tonight.

We had actually gone to the museum for their Creative Readers program. It was an artistic rendition of The Teddy Bear's Picnic by Jerry Garcia. The performer sang a few bear songs, then read the story, and we all learned the song. Meanwhile, it was ASL-interpreted, which intrigued me since I've had some ASL (in fact the whole place is extremely accessible, with books transcribed in braille as well). Bud was tiring during the program but enjoyed it; Sis wasn't interested and played with Mama in the Great Green Room.

Along with chasing pigeons on the Green, eating lunch at Claire's, trying to visit the art museum, and wandering the little street fair, it was a wonderful visit.

I think we'll try another new children's museum next weekend--third's a charm!