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By Elee Wood, Public Scholar of Museums, Families, and Learning
Have you ever been to the museum and noticed that the benches are a little bit bigger and there seems to be something for tall visitors and the same thing for short visitors? We did that on purpose. One of the most important things for planning museum experiences for families is to think about how all our visitors, tall and short, young and old, can take part in the action.
When our staff are planning for exhibits we spend lots of time thinking about how to create these family learning moments—you know the ones, where you sit or stand side-by-side, laugh and giggle at something funny or point out something interesting. In lots of museums everything is too big for little kids, and in lots of children’s museums especially, some things are too little for big kids. We look for how we can make experiences work for everyone.
One of my favorite examples of these is in Dinosphere. Behind the T-Rex attack, there are two viewers where you can “look through their eyes” and see a different view of the action . These viewers are the 5th most visited element in the exhibit (no surprise, the Dig Pit is number one). There’s one for tall visitors and one for short visitors. The reason behind this is pretty obvious on one level—it is easier when you don’t have to stoop down or stand on your tip toes to see what is going on. From our side of things we secretly hope (and we’re pretty sure that you do) that you are looking through the viewers and talking about what you see. You may not always do this side-by-side, but you might take turns looking and talking. We like that! What is also fun to watch is when your kids remind you that you can look too—often we see children looking into the viewfinders and pointing out the taller set of eyes for their parents to look through.
When parents and kids do things together some fun things can happen. You might think about talking about what you each see and how you see it differently. You might create a story and talk about the outcome, or you might find out that your child knows a ton about dinosaurs that you haven’t already heard!
Whether you visit the museum once a week, once a month or once a year, we hope that both the tall visitors and the short visitors have something to do together. If you haven’t taken advantage of it yet, take a look around—there’s family sized fun around every corner.
