Children Welcome to Explore, Play and Create at
The Long Island Children's Museum
Started as a dinner conversation in 1989 between a group of Long Island business people, artists and educators - parents all - was the idea for the museum. Why, they wondered, didn't Long Island have the type of institution they visited on their family travels across the country? That conversation led to a commitment to create for the community an exciting place that would stimulate a child's natural curiosity and educate through exploration and play.
The Long Island Children's Museum, a treasure trove of exhibits and programming for area families, is a long-time member of the Huntington Arts Council. The museum opened as a private, not-for-profit institution in 1993 in a 5,400-square-foot demonstration site. This prototype museum, featuring five interactive exhibits, was built to test the viability of building a larger, permanent children's museum. Community response was immediate and overwhelming: the projected annual visitation of 25,000 people was exceeded in the first four months of operation! The permanent museum opened on February 27, 2002 in Museum Row at historic Mitchel Field.
The Long Island Children's Museum today is home to 14 hands-on, interactive exhibit galleries, a 145-seat state-of-the-art theater and three classroom-size learning studios. Indoor and outdoor gallery spaces are interdisciplinary, age-appropriate, and intergenerational. The Children's Museum also offers a wide range of educationally and culturally diverse public programs, including its annual "From Generation to Generation" folk arts series, daily early childhood programs, art, music and science-based workshops, parenting workshops and more.
The Children's Museum is committed to programming to children and families not typically served by educational and cultural institutions or who cannot readily afford visits to our facility. It has been designated a "Primary Institution" by the New York State Council on the Arts, defined by the Council as an organization that "is vital to the cultural life of New York State." The Children's Museum serves more than 265,000 children and adults annually across the metropolitan region and is Long Island's most well-attended museum.
On January 29, the Children's Museum premiered "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," based on the books of Frank Baum. Museum visitors will be the first audience to see this new exhibit before it embarks on a national tour. This captivating exhibit, which runs through May 2, allows families to step into a larger than life, pop-up book and experience science, art and history through the magic of this timeless tale. Children will have the opportunity to role play in Dorothy's house, see the power of tornados as they crank up their own storm, solve brain teasers alongside the Scarecrow, learn heart facts with the Tin Man and crawl through a cave to test their courage. Visitors can help finish the yellow brick road that leads them to the Emerald City. There are workshops to complement the exhibit.
In April, the Children's Museum will be re-opening its award-winning outdoor exhibit "Our Backyard." Visitors will see some new additions as our garden starts to bloom, including a stonaphone (a five-note scale musical instrument made of large-scale metamorphic stones) and solar sunflowers. By turning the sunflowers toward the sun to generate electricity, children will be able to power a bee's "waggle dance" or activate a cricket's chirp.
"Our Backyard" was carved from an asphalt plot that adjoined the Museum. Today, the 4,300-square-foot space is a vibrant outdoor educational/recreational space that connects visitors to the natural environment and New York State's first "Nature Explore" classroom. The Children's Museum is now developing an online toolkit to inspire children's museums across the country to develop similar museum-tested, award-winning programs.
The Children's Museum website has a kids page in which there are a variety of educational computer games and creative activities, such as a pattern studio in which children learn of symmetry and geometric patterning. For a complete description and list of programs, please visit the museum's website, www.licm.org, to view the program calendar which divides events into recommended age groups. Individuals with further inquiries may contact the museum at (516) 224-5800.
