Written By: Andrew Meeker, Programs Fellow
Messy play is in full swing for its third summer at the Curiosity Kitchen, Boston Children’s Museum’s temporary outdoor exhibit! While Curiosity Kitchen is a wonderful addition for Museum visitors, any families passing by on the Children’s Wharf are both welcome and encouraged to play in the exhibit.
This year, daily activities are facilitated by four Programs Fellows: Nick Curbelo, Eleanor McCoy, Sam Wong, and myself, and the sensory materials we bring into the space change often. Children might dig for fossils in dirt bins one day, then give rubber ducks a bath in shaving cream the next!
As an emerging educator, I often have the instinct to make the setup look beautiful, a sentiment that I’m sure many of my Museum colleagues share. In mid-July, we tested out a two day beach-themed stint at Curiosity Kitchen, complete with a sensory table full of play sand and various treasures like vibrant plastic gems. Reminiscing upon long afternoons spent at my town beach building “drippy castles” with wet sand, I wanted to add some to the sensory table. As soon as I constructed one, however, a child came over and knocked it down. The child’s caregiver and I laughed at the excellent comedic timing.
Later that week, I took a different approach when Eleanor and I put mud with scoops, buckets, and little rakes in the same sensory table. I didn’t make anything by myself, but a four-year-old invited me to build mud castles with him. He also enjoyed destroying them by pouring water on them. We made so many that at one point, three castles were standing at once! Creations at Curiosity Kitchen may be short-lived, but it matters most that children enjoy themselves while working on them.
As Programs Fellows, we do not set strict expectations on how children should play at Curiosity Kitchen because too much structure can limit creativity. Although we love our themed days like “Arctic Takeover,” where we bring out ice and shaving cream, our visitors come up with the most creative ideas during open-ended activities. Paint days are super fun because children’s imaginations run wild as they fill up the exhibit’s wooden walls with bright colors. Plus, all the paint is washable!
During this activity, a three-year-old created a fantastical world with green paint, a paint roller, and bubbles flying over from the machine we place next to the exhibit each day. While the child was using his paint roller to pop bubbles, Eleanor asked him what he was doing. He told her that he was stopping little dragons inside the bubbles from attacking the big dragon’s house, aka the Curiosity Kitchen. We were fascinated by how the child saw a wooden structure covered in green paint and wove a story about mythical creatures around it without the presence of stuffed animals or toys.
Had we made the theme more specific, this child may not have come up with such a creative idea. Still, there’s absolutely a place for making our setup at Curiosity Kitchen look welcoming. Each morning, we find spots for toys, dishes, and tools that will draw visitors in and encourage them to play. A successful strategy of ours is filling large bins with messy materials (dirt, mud, shaving cream, etc.) and planting toys like plastic animals in them so that our first visitors have cool items to discover. As staff, we often talk about not getting attached to the setups we assemble in the morning because supporting children’s imagination and creativity is more important. By letting children and their ideas take the lead, we foster an environment that empowers children and makes them feel more confident while exploring new sensory experiences.
We are looking forward to a few more weeks of play in Curiosity Kitchen, where we will continue running our tried-and-true activities and trying out some new ones. Discovering new ways to bring the Museum’s outdoor exhibit to the next level is always rewarding for us! Until September 7, the exhibit will be open free of charge seven days a week from the hours of 10 am to 2 pm, except for closures due to inclement weather.
The Power of Play 