The Iowa Children’s Museum is a place where kids can play and learn together. Located in Coral Ridge Mall this colorful museum is aimed at teaching kids about the world around them through fun & play.
The ICM to Go program brings exhibits and activities to daycares, parks, and communities. This is a pay-what-you-can program. Read on to know more.
The ICM’s mission is to inspire every child to imagine, create, discover, and explore through the power of play.
Located on the lower level of Valley West Mall, The Iowa Children’s Museum (ICM) provides an environment where families discover their world together. Their exhibits feature hands-on educational components that foster the active exploration, problem-solving, and discovery that lead to learning. All of the activities are geared toward one of their five educational initiatives: Arts & Culture, Financial Literacy, Healthy Kids, School Readiness, and STEM.
Among the most powerful of those lessons comes from the research on play, and the overwhelming evidence that shows how critical it is for our children’s development. But the amount of time our children get to play has been steadily decreasing, a concern expressed by the keynote speaker at the Museum’s Celebrate Play Silver Spectacular fundraiser Wednesday night.
To help remedy that, the ICM is joining Museums for All, an Institute of Museum and Library Services program that provides free admission to visitors who receive federal benefits like SNAP, Medicaid, WIC, or Head Start. The ICM consulted with Johnson County Social Services to determine what programs they could reach through the program, which also includes a year of free membership for qualifying families. It’s an effort that Capps believes will make a difference. Check it out here.
The ICM’s vision is to create a world where all people are accepted and celebrated.
For many children, a visit to a museum is pure kid nirvana. It’s where they can test their mettle, be imaginative, and have SERIOUS FUN. However, the experience may be different for children from low-income families. That’s why the Iowa Children’s Museum has joined a national program called Museums for All to provide free admission to families who receive food assistance. Johnson County Social Services identified families who use SNAP, WIC, Medicaid, Head Start, and free school lunch programs as potential visitors who could benefit from the program.
The museum already offers free memberships to economically vulnerable families through its ICM for Everyone program and holds a series of free events like STEM Family Free Night and Super Hero Night. But bringing in Museums for All broadens its focus on inclusion by making it possible for qualifying families to visit any day the museum is open.
Museum staff are working to raise awareness about the barriers to inclusive play by hosting a Disability Awareness Day in March, which included a mock obstacle course that simulated using wheelchairs and crutches and by partnering with University of Iowa physical therapy and speech pathology students who offered adaptive art activities. The museum also plans to translate brochures and information at its welcome desk into more languages.
The ICM’s purpose is to create a place where children and their families can play and learn together.
The ICM’s exhibits feature hands-on educational components that promote the active exploration, problem-solving, and discovery that lead to learning. All of the museum’s activities and programs are designed for a primary audience of children eight years and younger with an adult caregiver. Exhibits are built to address one or more of the five areas of focus: Arts & Culture, Health & Wellness, Social & Emotional Development, and Literacy.
The museum also works to provide experiences that are unique and exciting. Some of these experiences include a child-sized village, the science of aviation, and creating structures using large-scale foam building blocks. The ICM also offers a Family Sanctuary for times when kids need to calm down or just retreat from the noise and activity of the museum.
To help more families visit, the museum recently joined Museums for All, an initiative of the Institute of Museum and Library Services that provides free or reduced admission for families who receive food assistance benefits. Capps said that Johnson County Social Services helped the museum identify visitors who could benefit from the program. ICM has also launched “ICM to Go,” a vehicle that travels throughout the corridor to bring exhibits and activities to daycares, parks, and communities that wouldn’t be able to afford a visit to the museum. Check this out!
Driving directions from Paneless Window Cleaning LLC. to The Iowa Children’s Museum
Driving directions from The Iowa Children’s Museum to City Park
