Louisiana Children’s Museum plans strategy to ‘age-up’

By Peter Finney Jr.
Clarion Herald, Kid's Clarion 

For the last five years, the Louisiana Children’s Museum has carved an imposing niche amid the moss-covered oaks, towering magnolias and peaceful lagoons of City Park after having resided for more than 30 years on Julia Street in New Orleans.

With students of Catholic schools counted among its 100,000 children visitors each year, the museum is looking to the future to “age-up” by providing even more tailored learning experiences for middle-school students and beyond.

“Right now, our museum exhibits are geared for ages 0 to 8 because Louisiana is the lowest of the low in literacy rates, and we have a lot of health and wellness issues,” said Shannon Blady, Ph. D., chief learning officer for the museum. “We believe if we can reach those very early and talk to parents and caregivers even before babies are born, we can make a bigger impact.

“However, our new strategic agenda is that we want to ‘age-up.’ We want to continue to support ages 0 to 8, but because there’s not a science center nearby for middle-school and high-school ages, we’re looking in the next couple of years to have programming for older children as well.”

Some U.S. cities have a designated science center for older students to engage in more hands-on activities outside of the classroom, but Blady said the museum is well-positioned to fill that vacuum in New Orleans.

The museum’s current stock-in-trade is the traditional, two-hour field trip, which attracts thousands of students in grades pre-kindergarten to third. Traditional field trips provide kids and teachers with a chance to learn through play and tactile experiences. The field trips have a 4-to-1 student-to-chaperone ratio.

“I’m a former teacher, and I taught almost every grade there is,” Blady said. “Field trips were a time where I was able to enhance my curriculum, and everyone could get all excited about it.” 

“We know that when these kiddos come, they have to have free play because that’s what the field trip is. But, we also want to show how learning can be integrated into that play. The teachers get really excited to be able to go back into the classroom and say, ‘Do you remember when we were at the sedimentation table that was flooded?’ The kids have visual background knowledge that they’ve all experienced, and the teacher can capitalize on that and enhance the lesson.”

The museum also offers a handful of thematic field trips on topics such as ecological exploration, living with the wetlands, becoming a documentarian, making maps and investigating the life cycle of food from the garden to the kitchen. The museum has reviewed the state’s “Louisiana Believes” educational standards to come up with ideas for the enhanced trips.

“It covers several science, social studies and ELA (English Language Arts) standards,” Blady said. “We examined all of the ‘Louisiana Believes’ state standards to see what could be covered with the current exhibits that we have.”

Those exhibits cover four “impact areas,” Blady said: culture and heritage, sustainability and the environment, health and wellness, and early learning.

“We have a sedimentation table that can teach children about weathering and erosion, so we looked to see that the second- and third-grade standards aligned with that,” she said. “We have a lot of educators and former teachers on our staff who are very familiar with curriculum and building curriculum. 

“We know that for a seventh-grade teacher, it might not be aligned with their standards, but we know how to work with the teacher and develop something that’s going to benefit the children and highlight the things they do in the classroom. We’re really excited about doing a lot of work with teachers this year.”

Blady said teachers asking for field trips tailored to a particular area of study can be accommodated, and reaching out to teachers is critical to the museum’s goals.

“If we’re going to ‘age-up,’ we’re going to have to think about our exhibits,” she said. “Older children are very much attracted to our studio because the studio has a lot of open-ended activities that any age group or skill level can participate in. They love the studio because they love to draw and paint. As we ‘age-up,’ we’ll have some focus groups, and we’re hearing from the community. We’re not just doing this blindly.”

The museum offers an “embedded” outreach program called Play Power for public school students in grades K-2 that includes a curriculum and teacher training to help children “heal, grow and develop through play.” 

A Living with Water program for third graders highlights the wetlands of Louisiana and how they play a vital role in the ecosystem.

“We go into the classroom and do a pre-lesson with everyone to talk to them about a design challenge of living with water in south Louisiana,” Blady said. “Then the children come to the museum and test out their designs on the sedimentation table, and then we have a followup meeting at the school in the classroom.”

The museum also provided a temporary safe haven to St. Thérèse Academy in 2021 when its buildings were damaged by Hurricane Ida.

For more information on the Louisiana Children’s Museum or to set up field trips, go to www.lcm.org or call (504) 523-1357. The museum is open Wednesday through Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Sunday from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.