Invest in kids’ playful learning at Imagine Children’s Museum
Published 6:27 pm Friday, October 24, 2014
You may know Everett’s Imagine Children’s Museum as a great place to take your kid or grandchild on a rainy day.
The nonprofit children’s museum, marking its 10th year at its current downtown location and having moved past 2 million visits earlier this summer, offers a range of different play areas that encourage exploration and imagination, including a farm, a jet plane, a bus, a model railroad, a cafe, a wildlife clinic, a rooftop play area (with dinosaur skeletons) and the recently completed Waterworks area that encourages splashing about but also sneaks in some first-hand experience with the physics of water.
But it’s much more.
The third Friday night of each month, from 5:30 to 9 p.m., Imagine opens its doors to all at no charge, giving all families the opportunity to take advantage of playful learning.
Imagine also is reaching out beyond the museum and into the community, said its Executive Director Nancy Johnson
Its Discovery Club is a summer program geared to kids entering the second grade that strengthens their reading skills.
The museum offers elementary school children in the city’s southern neighborhoods near Casino Road afternoon and evening after-school programs that, using the same playful learning ethic, emphasize the subjects of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) that build on what kids are learning at school.
A program at Evergreen Manor, an inpatient and outpatient facility for those with addiction issues, is working with mothers, teaching parenting skills as the children play and learn.
Museum staff also are working with child care facilities to teach a curriculum that introduces kids to STEM subjects geared to their age and also helps the facilities’ child-care staff learn how to lead the activities themselves.
The Imagine Children’s Museum and its programs have become a model for others. A Woodinville women who visited Imagine and has moved to Johannesburg, South Africa, started a campaign there that is building a children’s museum. Another museum modeled on Imagine, Playzeum, opened in June in Yuba-Sutter, California.
Friday, during its Breakfast for Champions fundraising event, Johnson explained the importance of Imagine’s outreach programs.
“The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s research shows that reading proficiency by the third grade is the most important predictor of high school graduation,” she said.
“Your investment matters.”
