BECKLEY, W.Va. –West Virginia children will get the chance to blast off into learning with the newest exhibit at the Youth Museum of Southern West Virginia.
The Moon to Mars exhibit will allow children to build their own rockets, hover over another planet in the Orion spacecraft, experience what it feels like to walk in a reduced-gravity environment and take part in other hands-on activities.
Museum’s Director of Operations Leslie Baker said the exhibit is on loan from the Omaha Children’s Museum.
“The particular museum in Omaha is a real special place and they’ve worked real hard with NASA to make sure that this exhibit was really good and educational, fun for kids, and we appreciate them and this is first of several that we’re going to rent from them over the next few years,” Baker said on MetroNews Midday last week.
She said this isn’t the first time the museum has borrowed exhibits from other institutions. Baker said they began renting traveling exhibits shortly after the museum opened in 1977.
She said the museum has showcased numerous exhibits over the 49 years it has been open.
“We have had exhibits from every major museum in the country, so anywhere from the Smithsonian to the Boston Children’s Museum, the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum, all the way to the Exploratorium in San Francisco,” Baker said. “We’ve had over 125 exhibits in our years.”
She explained that because the museum is small and serves as a popular field trip destination for many southern West Virginia schools, it was decided they would limit permanent exhibits and instead offer rotating displays with something for everyone. Baker said they change exhibits two to three times a year.
She said the great thing about the exhibits is that everyone who visits learns something.
“That’s the thing about children museums, it’s kind of like backdoor education, they come in, there’s bells, there’s pulley’s, there’s things to climb on and after the initial burst of energy and running from pillar to post, and they stop, they begin to really delve into the concepts,” Baker said.
She said the museum is currently open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; however, beginning April 1, it will be open seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.