Past Exhibit: Nature Cat: Backyard & Beyond
This article originally published on July 25, 2019.
Nature Cat, the award-winning PBS series, has a new exhibit at the Kohl Children’s Museum in Glenview. This immersive exhibit, Nature Cat: Backyard & Beyond, encourages children to have an adventure and learn about nature, starting in their own backyard. Each area of the exhibit teaches children to explore nature using all five of their senses. Head to the Kohl Children’s Museum to see the PBS series, Nature Cat, come to life!
Nature Cat: Backyard & Beyond
WTTW, Spiffy Pictures, and the Kohl Children’s Museum have teamed up to create a hands-on learning exhibit based on the PBS award-winning series, Nature Cat. Nature Cat: Backyard & Beyond will be opening July 30, 2019 and running through January 26, 2020, when it begins its world-wide tour. Each area of the exhibit creates an opportunity for your child to explore their natural world. The exhibit is geared toward ages 2-10, but my one year old found plenty to explore. Let me take you on a tour of the Nature Cat exhibit!
Nature Cat Backyard
The Backyard area is home to Hal’s Dog House, an interactive dog house where kids learn how to stay safe during storms, press buttons to create thunder, and measure the time between lighting flashes. The dog house has a mesmerizing lava lamp the baby just loved. The Backyard also includes hand-on planting in recycled bottles of flowers and vegetables.
The Marsh
Hop aboard the raft, put on your life vest, and come explore the marsh! Look through the telescope or the binoculars to see what nature has to offer. Make sure to help Marvin and Squeeks sort the trash and recycling you find to help reduce pollution. The recycling sort gave us a great conversation about where all the trash goes. My kids’ favorite part of the exhibit was rock climbing to slide down the river. As Nature Cat says, “Tally Ho”!
Nature Cat Cave
Kids put on their safely helmets, turn on their lights and head into the cave to help find Hal’s frisbee. In the cave you will find critters, glow worms, and bats overhead. The glow worms twinkle in the dark cave. You will follow the flow of the river below the Earth’s surface.
The Forest
In the forest, you will find a hollowed-out tree truck to climb inside. You can help the squirrels order the pinecones inside the tree. You will discover which animals live inside rotted logs, as you climb through. This area shows how many creatures call nature their home. The fake grass, bugs, and storyboard walls create an inviting space that looks just like the Nature Cat show!
More Fun at Home
If your kids love Nature Cat, check out the PBS website to learn more about DIY ways to explore and use nature through crafts, games, and videos. The exhibit mirrors what you see on the show and games you can play on the website. It is a great resource to use when explaining to your children what they are going to see at the exhibit or reinforcing the discovery skills they learned while there.
Past Exhibit: Build It
This article originally publishing in February, 2019.
Build It is returning to Kohl Children’s Museum of Greater Chicago on February 12, 2019. This popular exhibit includes a larger than life collection of building blocks that allow children to explore their creativity while learning about architecture, science, and storytelling and will be at the museum through June 30, 2019.
Your kids will be able to discover, stack, bridge, enclose, make patterns, name and symbolize using blocks, which are the seven stages of block play. Block play teaches several important mathematical concepts, including measurement, numeral awareness, part-to-whole relationships and social concepts such as sharing and collaboration.
The different blocks included in the exhibit include classic Duplo interlocking plastic blocks, Haba architectural wooden blocks and Imagination Playground large foam building blocks. Fat Brain Toys will also supply a large collection of blocks, including Dado Planks, Hexactly blocks, Edushape plastic bristle blocks and Twigs for two-dimensional patterning.
Throughout the exhibit, children will have the opportunity to explore and learn at several different stations in the exhibit including:
It’s All Looking Up!: Examine building on vertical and horizontal planes. Your kids can use blocks to fill in outlines and blueprint graphics of famous Chicago buildings on the walls, build on vertical Duplo and Imagination playground walls, build with magnet blocks on metal walls and build with Velcro-style blocks on carpet walls.
Build It, Test It, Shake It: Build and test the strength of their structures by using weights to see if they can withstand a downward force. In addition, children can also create structures on a shaky “earthquake” platform to test side-to-side stability.
Shadow Boxing: Use light tables in their structures to investigate shadows and see how light affects translucent Magnatiles.
Free for All: Several zones will be set up with surfaces at varied heights and props such as toy animals, people, fabric, cars, balls, faux plants and trees, where children can use their creativity to develop imaginative worlds, storylines, and dramatic play, while focusing on STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Design, Math) concepts.
The “Build It!” exhibit was developed through the generous sponsorship of Wintrust, with additional support from Fat Brain Toys.
