Children’s museums are the crossroads where make-believe and reality intersect. The fun and games have always had a hidden educational agenda, but now more and more, museums dedicted to young people are creating exhibits that help youngsters get a gentle grasp of social issues.
Last year the Kohl Children’s Museum launched an exhibit about recycling, and now, an exhibit called “People,” designed to prevent prejudice, is opening Friday.
“There are a lot of diversity exhibits in children’s museums, but they have a world focus and introduce kids to the concept that things are different all over the world,” explains Mary Sinker, the museum’s director of exhibits. “We felt that it was important to say that people are different and do things differently right here where we all live together.”
The exhibit translates those abstract ideas into many new-fangled high-tech activities and lots of old-fashioned ones emphasizing both uniqueness and universality. In a newborn nursery, young visitors can play with baby dolls representing the various races and push a button to hear the sound of a crying newborn, which sounds the same throughout the world, and listen to lullabies in different languages.
In one of many other activities, children can learn to define their own identity by finding the origin of their names on a computer and then, with a Rube Goldberg-type contraption, they can move a marble color-coded for the continent of their ancestors into a big container representing the United States.
To discover the joys of that diversity, children can learn dance steps from videos of performers from many countries and see their own attempts superimposed on the screen.
To learn about the conflicts that can arise from perceived differences, young visitors can watch videos of children describing their hurtful experiences with racism.
The focal point of the exhibit embodies the message that encompasses all of the activities. An inflated globe inside an 8-foot-tall acrylic plastic cylinder can be lifted to the top, thanks to the physics principle of fluid dynamics, only with the cooperative efforts of many visitors.
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“People,” opening weekend Friday-Sunday features multicultural performances and additional activities, Kohl Children’s Museum, 165 Green Bay Rd., Wilmette, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily, $3. 708-256-6056.
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