CMSM Blog

Here’s what you will find in the Loose Parts Play Hub this month: – Bugs! One of our favorite parts of spring is that we get to observe all the crawling creatures who are coming out of hiding and winter hibernation. May is also the month that we start to prepare our butterfly house for

Here’s what you will find in the Loose Parts Play Hub this month: – Treasure Basket: New on the book shelf is a treasure basket. Treasure baskets are collections of beautiful or interesting items for infants and toddlers to explore. Children learn so much through their senses and these baskets offer a variety of different

It’s National Learn About Butterflies Day! Spring is right around the corner. What an excellent time to take a few minutes to learn something new about butterflies! Butterflies and other pollinators play an important and vital role in our ecosystem! Here are a few things you can do to help support butterflies and pollinators in

This month in the Loose Parts Play Hub you can play around with drawing portraits of yourself or those you came to play with. You can create silly faces with loose parts. Plus, you can get to know each other with some conversation cards! Here’s what you will find in the Loose Parts Play Hub

The Literacy Explores program at CMSM provides guests with child-led play experiences based around the five early literacy practices; sing, talk, read, write, and play! These early literacy practices start with what caregivers are already doing with their children and build from there. Spotlight on Early Literacy Practice: Write! – During Literacy Explorers, guests can

Loose parts play embraces an unrestricted method of play by offering children an assortment of materials or objects that can be freely moved, manipulated, and combined in various ways. This unstructured approach stimulates children’s creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills as they envision, design, and construct using the available materials. Here’s what you will find

Loose parts play is an open-ended approach to play that involves providing children with a variety of materials of objects that can be moved, manipulated, and combined in a different way. The open-ended nature of loose parts play stimulates children’s creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills as they imagine, design, and build using the materials

Pollinator Blend Harvested nectar plant seeds from CMSM’s beautiful Butterfly House take home a pack to enjoy a piece of the museum in your home garden! Seeds may include but not limited to; California Giant Zinnias, Cosmos, Coneflower, Marigolds, Wild Bergamot, Blazing Star, Mexican Sunflower, Daisy, New England Aster, Black-Eyed Susan, Giant Sunflower, Dwarf Zinnias

Sensory play is beneficial to children all year, and in the cold months of winter, making messes indoors feels worth it on some of the longer days. But summer provides the perfect opportunity to engage in sensory play with children, because you can take the messes outside! Sensory play not only captivates their imagination but

At the Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota, we have three kitchens: the mud kitchen, the Cabin kitchen, and the play kitchen in the farm-to-table Grow It Gallery. These exhibits are always popular, because children love this kind of pretend play. Play kitchens are a particularly popular resource for pretend play, as it benefits children and

By Michelle McDonough, M.D., family medicine physician in Mankato, Minnesota. Like a tablet with a low battery, or a car running low on gas, your body can run out of energy without its fuel and energy source — food. Just as a tablet needs the right cord to charge and a car requires the correct

Bourbon Street & Beignets! The Association of Children’s Museum Interactivity Conference: Leveraging Our Voice, hosted by Louisiana Children’s Museum in New Orleans was held this past April. Participating with over 700 other professionals from around the world who work in the field were Heather Ungerer, Vice President of Operations and Kim Kleven, Vice President of