Tri-City
area kids learned what it was like to experience the
fun of a museum in their own backyard.
If you listened
carefully on Saturday, April 25th you could hear the delighted screams
of young children emanating from the Centerville Presbyterian Church
in Fremont as they played their hearts out at this area’s first-ever
Children’s Museum Experience Event.
The kids had so
many things to do both indoors and outdoors they didn’t know where
to go first.
Do you remember
the fabulous feeling of sand going through your hands at the beach
when you were a child? Outdoors, kids enjoyed scooping,
pouring, measuring and digging into a world of fine, white sand on
a mega-sized table.
Also outdoors, youngsters
could bury their hands into sand and feel the running water to find
treasures they could take home with them. “I loved
watching the kids doing this,” said Marianela Pena, president
of Kimbookai Children’s Museum which staged the event. “
They were calling to their parents to show them the treasures they
found and their delight was evident in their faces and their voices.”
Also outside, children
played with percussion instruments and danced as only kids can with
that happy abandonment.
Inside, there were
a slew of places to explore and enjoy. They could start
by entering the village of Kimbookai where they found the story of Kimo
and Maboo in their quest to find harmony for their village. This
is called the Legend of Kimbookai. In this exhibit, young
people could make flags from different countries, play with the two
child-sized figures of the main characters, explore the village
huts and a cave and utilize their creativity and imagination to the fullest.
The children could
also make butterflies, create bugs and build other inventions with pom poms,
pipe cleaners and other supplies. They could also create
fancy crowns to wear throughout their museum experience. These
art projects were proudly taken home to show to those who weren’t
lucky enough to share the fun of the museum experience.
A very popular station
was the vertical tunnel where children placed cups into a wind tunnel
to observe them fly and float on air.
For some action-packed
activities, there was tumbling where the children could climb, roll,
jump and crawl. And for a combination of action-oriented
and imaginative play, there was also a big-block area with soft,
oversized blocks and interlocking hard blocks where the kids could
create universes of their own.
Best of all was a
Kid’s Café where youngsters could trade dollars for Kimbookai bucks
and buy snacks of their own choice – all very healthy ones, mind you.
“The idea of the
Museum Experience,” said Marianela Pena, “is to allow children
and parents in our area to know the joy and delight of a children’s
museum for the Tri-City area. Our Kimbookai Children’s
Museum group has been working on creating just such a museum for
our area and we hope that the Museum Experience helped community
members envision what fun this would be for both parents and children.”
As an AAUW member,
if you would like to help create such a museum for the children of
the Tri-City area either as a board member, donor or helper, please
go to the
Kimbookai web site or just telephone Marianela Pena at: (510) 742-6474.
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