New Children’s Museum of Virginia Exhibit Opens Feb. 8

Get out of your house and into the trees at the Children’s Museum of Virginia’s
newest exhibit – opening February 8

This winter families can spend some quality time hanging out in the trees with a visit to the Children’s Museum of Virginia’s newest exhibit, Tree Houses: Look Who’s Living in the Trees! 

Tree Houses includes fun, hands-on ways to explore the important roles that trees play in providing homes for all sorts of wild things (including people!).  Incorporating all of the senses, this popular exhibit engages forest explorers young and old in indoor nature explorations and the ecology of sustainable harvesting of this important natural resource.

In this exhibit, families can:

• Look for signs of animal tree dwellers as they walk through an indoor tree house and across a wobbly connecting bridge
• Play a computerized forest game where they can harvest trees without harming wildlife
• Watch how a forest becomes a house
• View the tree houses people have built around the world. Visitors can even design and build their own
• See stereoscopic 3-D images of some of the smaller animals we can find living in trees in New England.
• Listen for animals inside the tree house and try to guess their sounds on an “animal dance floor”
• Peer down from inside a “crow’s nest” (and peer down at the folks “on the ground”)
• Revisit favorite fictional tree dwellers, from the Ewoks of Star Wars to Winnie the Pooh
• Wander through a “kitchen” to discover not-so-obvious tree connections in our own houses.

Tree Houses will open to the public on February 8.  The exhibit was produced by the Environmental Exhibit Collaborative (EcoTarium, Worcester, Massachusetts; ECHO at the Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, Burlington, Vermont; and the Children’s Museum of Maine Portland, Maine) with major support from Jane’s Trust.  Additional support was provided by Cabot Family Charitable Trust and the Institute for Museum and Library Services.  It will be at the Children’s Museum of Virginia through May 17.

Sunday, February 9^h at 12:30 p.m. and 2:00 p.m., look for special guests visiting from the Virginia Zoo. You can meet some live critters that call trees home. Visit www.childrensmuseumva.com for programming updates.

For more on the Children’s Museum of Virginia in Portsmouth, read this from the RFM archive:  It’s Cool Kid-Time! | Richmond Family Magazine

About the Children’s Museum of Virginia

Children step inside a world where bubbles grow bigger than they are, where the forces of energy electrify and spark their imagination, where they can be a farmer, a banker, a scientist, and more! The Museum also includes the Lancaster Antique Toy and Train collection – an attraction for kids of all ages as well as a modernized Planetarium.            It also features a Museum Gift Shop where children can take some imagination home with them. The Children’s Museum of Virginia is located at 221 High Street, Portsmouth, VA 23704. For more information call 757-393-5258 or visit www.childrensmuseumva.com