Lots of people have been asking me, "What do you do at a children's museum all day? What does a Museum Educator do?"It's different every day. Lately, I've been leading tour groups. We have a temporary exhibit that gives guests (especially the kiddles) a chance to simulate everyday tasks with some disability or another. Mainly, the kids can try out school tasks or climbing a climbing wall with vision-disability goggles on, try out wheelchair basketball, or try communicating while pretending to have a verbal communication disability. It's pretty neat. It's "a day in the life of a child with a disability."
So, with lots of corporate sponsorship and community volunteers, kids from our area can come have the Kids Like You, Kids Like Me Tour for free. That makes it a pretty big draw!
(Sorry this is reading like a brochure/pamphlet. I'm totally confident in your ability to deal with it.)
The tour usually consists of four parts: (1) time in the actual exhibit to simulate a day in the life of a child with a disability, (2) a tactile art lesson, (3) up close and personal time to talk with and ask questions of a local person with a disability, and (4) a puppet show. It's a pretty cool tour! I've enjoyed it the most with 3rd-4th graders, but 1st-2nd grades do pretty well; the kindergartners don't. They just don't quite get the point...almost, but not quite.
Today, we had a tour group of 155 kids. (Yes, 155 kids. That's a lot.) I'll tell about the ins and outs tomorrow!
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