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 MetLife
Foundation and Association of Children's Museums Promising
Practice Award
For the past eight years, ACM has received a grant from the
MetLife Foundation to develop the MetLife Foundation and Association
of Children's Museums Promising Practice Award. The award
honors excellence and provides recognition for innovative
and creative practices in U.S. children's museums; promotes
management practices which support alternative and creative
programming; builds a body of knowledge of exemplary programs
and practices; and establishes models for the advancement
of the children's museum field at large.
Good physical and emotional health is crucial to learning
and growth from birth to adulthood. Healthy attitudes and
habits start at home, but families face significant barriers
to making good choices. Children’s museums have the ability
to bring attention to issues related to child development
and to convene important discussions among community-based
organizations, media partners and policy makers.
The 2008 Promising Practice Award will honor exhibits, programs
and management practices that promote the importance of outdoor
play and activity as a key component of healthy living. The
application processed is closed for the 2008 awards. Museum
award recipients will be announced at InterActivity 2008:
Let's Play in Denver, Colorado, Friday, April 25.
Congratulations to the 2007 winners:
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Children's
Museum of Skagit County (Mount Vernon, WA) received
a $5,000 Promising Practice Award for its outreach
to low-income families. In working with different cultural
groups in its region, as well community agencies, Children's
Museum of Skagit County recognized that a model of "if
we build it, they will come" does not always work.
Therefore, this museum goes out in the community, arranges
transportation to the museum for field trips and special
events on a variety of health topics. Community Free Days
are promoted widely and scheduled regularly for families.
Through signage and interpretation services in multiple
languages, the museum is able to serve a more diverse
group of families.
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Stepping
Stones Museum for Children (Norwalk, CT) received
a $7,500 Promising Practice Award for its children's
health initiative. Key project components include: a series
of eight health vignettes broadcast on Connecticut Public
Television during children's programming; statewide community
outreach including travel kiosks and travel kits; health
educational programs designed to reach schools and groups,
afterschool programs, families, educators and community
organizations; and a fifteen-hundred square-foot traveling
exhibit of multi-sensory games and problem-solving activities
called "Healthyville."
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The
Children's Museum of Houston (TX) was presented with
a $7,500 Promising Practice Award for its Healthy
Minds, Healthy Bodies program. Designed not as a stand-alone
program, Healthy Minds, Healthy Bodies is integrated with
long-standing and familiar programs at 30 elementary schools
and at 20 branches of the city public library system and
the museum. By presenting new material in settings where
low-income families already visit and trust, the barriers
to reach these families are reduced. Three separate evaluations
of the Healthy Minds, Healthy Bodies program conducted
by university and public sector researchers have indicated
100 percent satisfaction among Spanish-speaking audiences
and school administrators.
Congratulations to the 2007 honorable mention applicants.
Each of the three museums received a registration scholarship
to InterActivity 2008 in Denver.
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Madison
Children's Museum (WI) for its fundraising policy,
which states that the museum will seek corporate sponsors
whose projects or services are consistent with what the
museum values - respect for all children, community connections,
sustainability and play as the natural way to learn.
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The
Discovery Center at Murfree Spring (Murfreesboro,
TN) for its four-month, family-focused nutrition and exercise
program called "Discovering Healthy Families,"
which is run in partnership with Middle Tennessee State
University, StoneCrest Medical Center and the local American
Heart Association.
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Amazement
Square, The Rightmire Children's Museum (Lynchburg,
VA) for its "Healthy Heads, Hands and Hearts"
program that is carried out through a unique educational
cartoon series published daily in the local newspaper
and through series of in-house and outreach programs.
The program brings attention to the importance of nutrition
and physical activity and the negative impact of drug
abuse.
MetLife
Foundation and Association of Children's Museums Promising
Practice Replication Award
In 2004, MetLife Foundation and ACM established the Replication
Award, a $10,000 restricted grant for former Promising
Practice Award recipients to create an online "tool
kit" and InterActivity training session so that other
children's museums may learn how to create a similar, museum-tested,
award-winning program in their own communities.
The application processed for the 2008 award is closed. The
museum award recipient will be announced at InterActivity
2008: Let's Play in Denver, Colorado, Friday, April
25.
Congratulations to the 2007 Promising Practice Replication
Award winner.
- Minnesota
Children's Museum (St. Paul) was awarded the 2007 Promising
Practice Replication Award. The Replication Award
is open to previous Promising Practice Award recipients
and provides the winner a $10,000 grant to develop a tool
kit to further share the award-winning practice with the
children's museum field. Minnesota Children's Museum's Wakanheza
initiative was first recognized in 2006 with a Promising
Practice Award. (Wakanheza is the Dakota word for "child"
and the closest English translation is "sacred being.")
By providing remarkably simple yet powerful responses to
two common questions - When I see a parent and child struggling
in public, what can I do to step in and improve the situation?
And, is there something I can do to prevent these difficult
situations in the first place? - the Wakanheza initiative
seeks to improve the treatment of children, youth and families.
Click Here
to view Summaries of Promising Practice Award Entries, 1999-2007
View
a PDF of the commemorative publication
celebrating 10 years of the Promising Practice Award!
Universal
Design for Learning Award
VSA arts and ACM share a commitment to inclusive and accessible
learning through hands-on learning experiences. Creating new
opportunities is an ongoing challenge. In an effort to advance
knowledge and best practices, VSA arts and ACM are pleased
to present the inaugural year of the Universal
Design for Learning Award. The award is an innovative
collaboration that will identify model programs in children’s
museums that demonstrate learning standards for inclusive
practice and provide sub-awards and technical assistance to
the selected museums to refine and document their practices
for dissemination.
The application processed is closed for
the 2008 awards. Museum award recipients will be announced
at InterActivity 2008: Let's Play in Denver, Colorado,
Friday, April 25.
Congratulations to the 2007 Universal Design
for Learning recipients:
The three 2007 Universal
Design for Learning Award winners received $15,000
grants to support exhibits and initiatives that demonstrate
learning standards for inclusive practice.
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Kohl Children's Museum of Greater Chicago (Glenview,
IL) received a Universal Design for Learning Award
for providing exhibit activities that stimulate all children's
senses and for planning its new facility using the principles
of Universal Design. For example, equipping signage with
simple fonts and high contrast backgrounds makes a world
of difference to children with visual limitations. All
handles, pulls and other manually operated devises are
easy to grasp with one hand and do not require twisting
of the wrist to operate. Interactive exhibit components
are positioned to be usable from both forward and side
approaches and a reachable distance. In the museum's exhibit
"All About Me" young children learn about and
experience the joy of their own physical abilities, not
measured against other children. Activities for children
include pinpression formations and using switch-activated
cameras to see their body from all angles - from the top
of their head to the soles of their shoes or the rubber
from their wheel chairs.
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Connecticut Children's Museum (New Haven) accepted a
Universal Design for Learning Award for its Accessible
Art Works program. Created based on the principle that
art and artists should be accessible to all children.
Local artists, some with disabilities, some without, come
to the museum to read children's picture books and to
perform the book in their own particular artistic genre.
An American Sign Language interpreter signs the book and
a Braille copy of the book is available. (More than 200
of the museum's collection of picture books are Brailled).
Following the book reading, children then are given opportunities
to explore the ideas and themes presented in the story.
For example, after reading a Tommy dePaola's book Charlie
Needs a Cloak, children watch museum staff act out
the story with authentic props-carding the wool shorn
from a life-size sheep and spinning it onto the spool.
Later the children are given a small loom and loops with
which to work their own weaving magic.
- DuPage Children's Museum (Naperville, IL) took home its
Universal Design for Learning Award for its ongoing, 15-year
commitment that all local families have full access to the
museum's exhibits and programs. In 1992, the museum launched
its Community Access Network Initiative, which now includes
formal partnerships with 50 social service agencies, through
75 different programs, for families living in poverty, recent
immigrants, children with physical and other disabilities,
children living in residential treatment programs and those
who have been designated as at risk of abuse or neglect.
Additionally, the museum offers a Third Thursday program
for families of children with autism as a way of helping
these families to feel more comfortable visiting the museum
and as a vehicle to help other families understand the unique
challenges and joys of raising children with Autism Spectrum
Disorder.
Click
Here to view summaries of Universal
Design for Learning Award applicants.
Great Friend
to Kids Award
The Great Friend to Kids Award is presented annually at the
Association of Children's Museums' InterActivity conference.
The award honors those who have made significant and outstanding
contributions to strengthening education and advancing the
interests of children.
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ACM is pleased to announce that the 2008 Great Friend
to Kids Award will be presented to Joe
L. Frost, Ed.D., L.H.D., InterActivity 2008: Let's
Play during the Saturday, April 26, plenary session.
Dr. Frost, who is Parker Centennial Professor Emeritus
for the University of Texas at Austin, was selected for
his national leadership in the education community, his
groundbreaking work on children's play and his dedication
to advocate for a child's right to play.
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Past recipients include Dr. Bettye Caldwell, Dr. Julius
B. Richmond and Dr. Edward F. Zigler (2007) for their
roles as architects and early founders of the Head Start
program, Dr. T. Berry Brazelton (2006) Erikson Institute
(2005), Kevin Clash (2004), Barbara Pierce Bush (2003),
UNICEF (2002), Dr. David Elkind (2001), Dr. Robert Coles
(2000), Children's Television Workshop (1999), First Lady
Hillary Rodham Clinton (1998), Dr. James P. Comer (1997),Fred
Rogers (1996), Dr. Ernest L. Boyer (1995), Peggy Charren
(1994), Marian Wright Edelman (1993), Dr. Howard Gardner
(1992), and Michael Spock (1991). Click
here for details on each of the Great Friend to Kids
Award recipients.
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