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The Please Touch Museum Turns 30! Help Them Blow Out the Candles!
By Andrea Reich

“Look at all the people out there, playing out there!” shrieked Caleb Goldberg, 6.

Caleb was commenting on how busy the Please Touch Museum was on Saturday, Sept. 2 as they celebrated their 30th birthday, with different themed count-down birthday parties each Saturday until Oct. 2. “The Museum tries to infuse fun with education, creating what they call “culturally aware people.”

“There is always an element of education—always a layer of learning. It’s just peppered with fun,” said Jennifer Bush, education manager at the museum.

The Museum is geared towards children ages 0 to 7, with the mission of learning through play. A child of 3 can fall into a different world in the Alice in Wonderland exhibit, but learn different lessons than a 7 year old would.

The Museum also likes to promote its “self-guided” tours. This means there are no time limits on exhibits and no right or wrong route for visitors to take. Moms are taking note and are appreciating the museum’s child-friendly mentality.

Michelle Ecker, a mother of 2, said, “There’s no time pressures with moving from exhibit to exhibit and there’ something to do for all the different age ranges.”

The museum is especially easy to navigate through since all the exhibits are on one floor.

“It’s a safe environment for kids to explore,” Miriam Faruqi, mother of Cyrus, 3, said. “You don’t have to worry about them getting hurt or getting lost because everything is all on one floor. And, actually, you can sit back and watch them enjoy and explore. You don’t have to be running after them and worried that they’re going to fall or hurt themselves. Even the bathrooms are child-size appropriate; you can tell they put a lot of thought into it.”

“We did the arts and crafts project already this morning and read the books related to the Maurice Sendak setup,” Goldberg said. “The variety of activities here are for all ages. We can have fun no matter where we are, or what room we’re in.”

Another interactive exhibit the museum boasts is the theatre. Here, children participate in helping fun monsters in telling the story of the Three Little Pigs. Children can yell out answers while the monsters, which are really hand puppets, use props to spell out words and illustrate the story through props.

But if you want to experience the museum this way, you better come soon: the Please Touch Museum is making the big move in the spring of 2008 to Memorial Hall, almost quadrupling in size.