Play on the Go: Columbia Play Project’s Mobile Children’s Museum
The kids at Esther Short Park see the Lego bricks, bubbles and rocket launchers on the tables from across the park, and their curiosity finally gets the best of them. They approach the table and are greeted with a warm smile and invited to play. This permission to play is all that they need. They immerse themselves in the toys and get lost in the experience of Columbia Play Project.
For people like Jeanne Bennett, these are the moments she lives for.
“It’s completely heartwarming to watch kids as they begin to tentatively explore toys,” she says. “They are not quite sure what they are allowed to touch and what they are not allowed to touch. The kids are usually quite gentle at the beginning, and then as they become more comfortable, they realize that the toys are there for them to play with and become more animated. Some kids will jump from toy to toy for just a few minutes and then come back. Other kids will dive in and spend 30 minutes or an hour playing with the same toy. I watched one little boy build a rocket out of magnetics, and after he had his rocket all the way built, he took it apart and did it again because he thought he could improve the design.”
A Museum Like No Other
Bennett has a vested interest in children’s play because she’s made it her mission to promote play for the young and the young at heart. As board chair for Columbia Play Project, she wants to bring play to Southwest Washington. She and a few others created Columbia Play Project as a social enterprise dedicated to building a full-scale, high-quality children’s museum in Clark County.
“A few years from now, we hope we have a full-scale children’s museum that is an indoor facility with permanent and rotating exhibits,” says Bennett. “There will be various kinds of labs, like an art lab, a science lab, a computer lab, a music lab, a children’s theatre, a curated children’s library, an indoor and outdoor playground space, a restaurant, and a gift shop.” It’s an ambitious goal that is needed more now than ever since the closing of Portland Children’s Museum left a massive hole in the Portland metro community. Thankfully for families, Columbia Play Project has been hard at work to fill that gap.
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Go here to learn more about Columbia Play Project’s mission to create exploratory play spaces for the young and young-at-heart in Southwest Washington.
