CMOM in January

Brrr! It’s cold outside, so come in to the Children’s Museum of Memphis. We’ve got some exciting things going on this month:

January 12—Safe Kids Safety Day Celebration (11 a.m. until 2 p.m.): Werre helping Safe Kids Mid-South commemorate 20 years of growing safe kids in Memphis and the surrounding areas. Join us as we present a special presentation of 9-1-1 Good Sense in a Pinch program and meet Fire Safe Frannie as you take a tour of our very own 36 ft. Fire Safety Trailer. Bring a safety tip that you and your family practice to post on our Kid’s Share Board to help keep other children safe and receive a prize from Ronald McDonald. Play our “What If” game to see if your child knows what to do if ever in an unsafe situation.

January 21—A Celebration Fit for a King (10 a.m. until 1 p.m.): Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. took a courageous stand for unity and equality for all people. Following the non-violent teachings of Gandhi, Dr. King's example of peaceful demonstrations made a powerful impact on the fight for civil rights. Join us as we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Day. Visitors will enjoy making crafts to commemorate the day, decorating squares of hope to be added to our ever-growing peace quilt. In addition, take part in the largest balloon release of hope while two doves of peace are being released into the air.

January 26—Treasures and Memories - Parent/Child Workshop with Mrs. Sew & Sew (1 p.m. to 2 p.m.): Everybody has a special garment of clothing that holds memories that are close to the heart. You and your child can bring an article of clothing and its memories to this workshop and hand stitch it into something new. Make a useful tote bag, book bag, keepsake pillow cover, or video game seat cover for yourself or create a gift for a loved You create a new memory with your family while learning a basic sewing skill for life. We’ll provide accessories like buttons, jewels, fabric paint and more to add to your project and everyone will receive before-and-afte​r keepsake pictures of your project to take home. $20 per project.

We hope to see you soon!

Balancing Act is Leaving on January 15!

Come see this fun exhibit before it leaves and learn to balance things...just like Jana!

Fire Safety

The Children's Museum of Memphis is coming to the Memphis Zoo! On Saturday, October 22, CMOM’s director of education Felicia Peat, our maintenance technician Mike Garries, and I will implement several fire safety programs, from 10:30 a.m. until 2 p.m. We are thrilled to display and demonstrate our new Surrey Fire Safety House. We hope to see you there!

SUMMER CAMP at The Children's Museum of Memphis!

What will you say when you teacher asks, “What did you do this summer?” Your answer could be. “I played with bugs and found buried treasures at The Children’s Museum of Memphis!” What better way to spend the summer?


Backyard Bugs and Butterflies Summer Camp:
June 27 – July 1
8:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

There’s no need to be afraid of the fascinating small wonders found in the world around us. Campers will discover what is cool about creepy, crawling, intriguing little critters and the roles they play in nature when they sign up for our Backyard Bugs and Butterflies Summer Camp. Girls and boys will become entomologist for a week as they study and observe bugs found right in our own backyard. Each child will photograph, identify and record their findings as they investigate bug behaviors. They will also witness the complete life cycle of the butterfly and make their own butterfly inspired wall hangings. Who can sit still while cheering for their favorite insect in the Olympic Bug Races and planting flowers and foliage to attract beautiful butterflies?

Cherished Treasures Adventure Camp:
July 11 – 15
8:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Follow the map that leads to Cherished Treasures Adventure Camp where girls and boys will travel around the globe and explore 7 of the world’s most famous treasure islands. Buried chests full of handmade personalized jewelry, uniquely designed fancy belt buckles, and priceless tie-dyed t-shirts await explorers as they learn about the ambush of Nombre de Dios in the Caribbean Islands and the hidden treasures in the Tusket Islands that belonged to the d’Entremont family. Campers will listen to lost tales of sunken ships as they create their very own message in a bottle, replicate lost art from famous artists like Van Gogh and maybe even walk the plank if they dare.

Camp sessions are designed for ages 6 years old and up
$130.00 per session. Snacks provided.
Sign up today as space is limited.
Call 901-458-2678 for more information.

What to do When CMOM's Closed...

Thursday is another snow day for Memphis and the metro area. We are usually a creative and educational refuge for kids (and parents) with the Cabin Fever. However, because of the inclement weather and the impending morning road conditions, The Children’s Museum of Memphis will be closed tomorrow February 10, 2011. But just because you can’t come to CMOM doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy some great hands-on activities at home! Here are a few ideas from the brain trust that is your programs department.

Snowpocolyps 2011 Painting

A fresh snowfall is the perfect canvas!

Go to the kitchen and grab these materials:
* Food coloring
* Bowls or Ice cube tray
* Water
For each bowl or section of ice cube tray use a different color of food coloring. Mix 1-2 drops of water per 2-3 table spoons of water. Use old paint brushes to apply the paint to the outside snow. You can also use spoons to splatter the snow with color if you want a Jackson Pollock look. You’re front yard will look amazing!!!

To change it up, add the food color and water to old spray bottles and spray the snow different colors.

From experience, food coloring is generally NOT washable so either be careful, or wear old clothes that you don’t care about!

Ice Fishing
Don’t wanna venture outside? Try one of CMOM’s popular science experiments and learn about freezing points and the chemical NaCl. When it snows, what happens to everything? When the streets get icy, we call out the salt trucks and they pour salt on the roads. But why does it work?

Here’s what you need:
* Ice
* Water
* Pieces of string or yarn
* Salt
* A bowl
Fill a bowl with ice. Then fill the bowl about a third of the way with water. Take the pieces of string and lay them across the ice cubes. Next sprinkle the salt onto the string and ice. When the hits the ice it actually lowers the freezing point. Do you know what temp water turns to ice? 32 degrees Fahrenheit. The salt lowers that a few degrees so a water and salt solution will freeze at 30 degrees instead of 32.

Next, pull up on the string and see how many ice cubes you caught. The salt lowered the freezing point. It created a pool of water on the ice cube. The water salt solution became more diluted, so the freezing point rose, and the strings froze to the ice cube

Edible Finger Paint
Don’t want to do anything that has to do with snow or the cold? Try this recipe for edible finger paint.

Go to the pantry and grab that box of vanilla pudding. Don’t have pudding? Try condensed milk or cool whip. Mix in a little bit of food coloring. One drop is really enough…but remember the advice from above: food coloring probably will NOT wash out of clothes. If you don’t have old clothes to wear or smocks, try to use fruit juice or powdered jello as your dye.

Enjoy your day in! And send us pictures of your snow day adventures to Loni.Wellman@cmom.com

Think Pink

October is national Breast Cancer Awareness Month! Here at The Children's Museum of Memphis, we're showing our support in a BIG way! CMOM's iconic building block letters will get a new hue for the month of October. On October 4th, museum CEO Dick Hackett started painting the letter "C" pink. We pick C to stand for Cure!!! The pink C is followed by the letters MOM. Check out these pictures of Dick Hackett getting his hands dirty and showing support fo Breast Cancer Awareness! For more infromation of Breast Cancer Awareness Month check out:

http://www.nbcam.org/about_nbcam.cfm

or

http://www.cancer.org/

Potato People!

Here are some of our creations from last weeks bookworms!

Some great potato creators!

Two very pretty potatoes.

Our friends from Silver Springs, MD made these awesome potatoes and left them with us to display!

Thanks guys!

Calling All HomeSchoolers!

Starting in September, you'll be seeing some special activities in SPARKS!

The programming department is currently creating Art, Reading, and Science activities just for homeschoolers!

Keep an eye out for Sparks to tell you when and where!

We'll be seeing you soon!

This Saturday's Home Grown Science!

Whatcha doin' Tomorrow?

Come hang out at The Children's Museum of Memphis. Tomorrow we'll be having one of our FAMOUS Home Grown Science sessions. It's a 3:30, and tomorrow it's all about chemistry. And I just added a new experiment. In fact, I just tried it out. I won't tell you the ingredients, but maybe you can guess! Check out the pictures below!

I give up! What is it?

Come on in and find out!

In other news, have a great weekend.

Meet the CMOM Program Staff!!! (oh, & Education)

Hey All!

So, CMOM's Art Smart Studio became a tad more colorful today! We've just added a staff wall. I cut out all the circles myself! Ok, a machine kinda helped me! It was something that I was inspired to do while at the Association of Children's Museum's conference in Denver.

BTW, the ACM conference was GREAT! Emily, the Education Manager, and myself learned a whole slew of new things. It really re-energized us!!! The momentum that we brought back will keep going and going until...well we don't have an end date just yet. Check back later!

Anywho, next time you're at the Museum, come by Art Smart and see our Staff Wall. Who knows, you just might learn a little something about us! I sure did! I never knew Josh (or J-Rock as he is known around here) was clumsy. Ok, I kinda knew that. :) Here are our dossier's.

And that's it for this Friday. Come visit us this weekend. Here's the low down on what's happening here this Saturday:

11am Bloomin' Art

12 noon R&R Storytime

1pm Kid Karaoke

3:30pm Home Grown Science: Slime and Ooze!

Hope to see ya!

Oh and I almost for got my useless triva for this post. It'll be brief. Here goes: The dot over the letter "i" is called a tittle. Now you know

Have a great weekend!