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Just What Is a Children’s Museum?

For anyone who may not have had an opportunity to visit one yet, let’s start with a brief explanation of exactly what a children’s museum is. Unlike traditional museums, which emphasize collections of art or artifacts, children’s museums are about the visitors—children—and their developmental needs. In these “client-centered” institutions, the needs and interests of children and their motivation to learn are as or more important than the actual content of the museum.

So, children’s museums have four essential characteristics:

• Learning occurs through interaction with the environment. Basically, children learn by doing. There are no signs in a children’s museum that say “Please Do Not Touch!”
• An informal educational setting allows visitors to follow their interests without time constraints. Unlike traditional academic settings, which have set schedules for learning, children’s museums allow visitors to develop their concentration and skills in the areas in which they are most interested.
• Visitors engage in real experiences within exhibits built to a child’s scale. For example, children might pull animal skins around themselves as they pretend to go to sleep in an Indian teepee, or might shop for food and other products in a multi-cultural marketplace, weighing out produce and spices themselves.
• Visitors associate memories and feelings and use their imagination to make their museum experience relevant to their everyday experiences.
  

How CMSJ Would Help Our Community

A top-quality children’s museum in St. Johns County would be a gift to the community and would:

• Create a place that encourages learning and enriches the lives of all children in our community.
• Inspire a love of learning to help enable children to become creative thinkers and to realize their highest potential.
• Provide an interactive, multidisciplinary educational experience with focus on art, local history, science, music, storytelling, and humanities.
• Offer regular programs, classes, and summer camps to keep children engaged and stimulated year-round.
• Provide an excellent resource for educators in the area to bring school children for field trips.
• Provide a fun place where visitors of all ages are encouraged to play, learn, imagine, create, and interact in a positive way.
• Encourage interest and knowledge of our community’s rich history and heritage.

Who Would CMSJ Serve?

Above all else, children’s museums serve children and their early developmental needs—that will always be the guiding mission of CMSJ. But by creating an organization in the community that serves children, we will also serve those who take care of children—parents, grandparents, caretakers, guardians, and educators. These people fall into three key categories:

• Residents
  The explosive growth within St. Johns County is undeniable and many of these new households have children. A top caliber children’s museum would provide a safe, fun meeting place for children and their parents and caretakers to go on a regular basis to interact, play, and learn.
• Visitors
  St. Johns County and St. Augustine have long been successfully marketed as a family destination. The children’s museum would become a must-do for visiting families with children.
• Educators
  With a focus on local and Florida history, CMSJ would strive to become a field trip destination for the 40 to 50,000 fourth-grade students from the Northeast Florida region, who come to St. Augustine as part of the Florida history course curriculum. In addition, we will target other school-age children from surrounding counties within easy driving distance.

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