With Spring Break and summer vacation coming up, we interviewed Henry Yau, Public Relations & Promotions Director at the Children’s Museum of Houston to find out why the Children’s Museum is the place to be.
How do you combine education and fun at the museum? We start with fun and thinking outside of the box first. A good example of that is our annual shaving cream Pi Fight. It actually celebrates the mathematical number 3.14, and it also happens to be March 14th which is Albert Einstein’s birthday. So there’s all this symbolism- you’ve got pie like “pie” and then the number pi and then Albert Einstein’s birthday, and we brought all those quirky items together to come up with our Shaving Cream Pi Fight. So we wanted to create awareness about math and promote the number, but we also want to make it exciting. Not just ‘what does pi represent?” but also, “what does pi represent out of this context?” And that’s why we have our annual Shaving Cream Pi Fight. Albert Einstein makes an appearance as well because it’s his birthday, and of course we have all the “pi” related activities: we make pudding pie, and we also get to make the longest chain of pi, anything related to pi, all on one day on Spring Break.
Photo Credit Children's Museum of Houston
Is there something most kids or families overlook at the museum that they’re missing out on? There’s so much to do! On a first visit, it takes about 4-6 hours to visit the entire museum. On your first visit, of course, you want to see all the performances, but we also want visitors to take a look into the exhibits as well because there’s a lot of them. We have 14 galleries and 13 exhibits, and each exhibit represents something different. Our mission is 21st century work force skills, but it’s also fun. For example, with our Kidtropolis exhibit and our Power Play exhibit, visitors aren’t going to miss out because it’s very popular and they’re right there in your face as soon as you walk into the exhibit. But there’s other exhibits below on the lower level called Invention Convention, and it gets your imagination cranking. We’re dealing with: engineering, science, technology, mathematics, they get to make rockets and LEGO cars, they do a big robots program, and you really can’t miss it.
What’s your favorite exhibit?
SECRET (Special Elite Crime Resolution and Espionage Team) is my new favorite thing, and it’s our new experiment at the museum. It’s brand new; we did a soft opening in November, and it’s a multimillion dollar project that we developed over 2 and a half years. We created a backstory that when the museum was expanding, construction workers found crystals underneath the museum. Apparently these crystals have been powering the museum, and this evil agency called RIVAL (Ridiculously Intelligent Villainous Agent League) wants to take over the museum. In response to that, the museum created SECRET to protect the museum. The kids work as agents and actually go on real missions wearing wristwatches around the museum, and the museum has been converted to this secret world. Nobody really knows about what’s going on, and we can’t tell you what they’re doing until you sign up.
Photo Credit: Cody Duty
Why is it your favorite? It requires a lot of critical thinking and team building, and it’s actually kind of hard. It’s more than just a scavenger hunt, and it highlights things about the museum that you never noticed before.
What is the best part about going to the Children’s Museum? The best part about going to the museum is making bonds with your family and friends. Every time I’ve been there with my nephews or friends and their families they always leave with a smile on their faces. You make personal lasting memories because every component of the museum requires you to do it with a parent or a grown up or a friend, so you create a bond in the museum, and thus create a memory.
Photo Credit Children's Museum of Houston
So you’ve gone with your family yourself?
Oh yeah! I have three nephews and one niece and they’ve grown up in the museum. They started out in TotSpot and as they’ve gotten older they’ve gravitated to other places.
Do you listen to their feedback? Oh, absolutely.
What are activities to be done as a family at the museum so that the parents aren’t just watching their kids have all the fun?
Primarily all of them do that. Kidtropolis is a great example- it’s a city for kids, and they get to experience different adult roles like shopping and getting a job, so unless they’re playing make believe by themselves it requires guidance from a grown up. Another great example is our science station- it changes regularly and the experiments require children to work together with parents. It’s not like where parents drop kids off and leave- we require the parents to be with the children at all times.
Photo Credit Cody Duty
So many of the exhibits are very hands-on—how does that make for a better learning experience? Kids learn through play- if it’s not interactive they won’t absorb those learning concepts. We want to stimulate all of their senses, and primarily kids learn through touch so we do audio, visual, and tactile. With lots of museums they get to see but they don’t get to do. For us, it’s the opposite, like with signs that say, “hey, please touch!”
We get the question a lot, “What is the children’s museum? Is it history or art for children?” We tackle a lot of subjects like nanotechnology and DNA extraction, so it can be hard to explain. The best way to understand the Children’s Museum is to come see it!
Do you have anything special for the summer or anything that’s better when it’s hot outside? For SECRET, there is going to be a secret agent academy and secret agent training for the big official opening.
What about Spring Break?
We’re doing Extreme Spring Break, which is brand new. We’re doing an extreme BMX block party where we shut down the street and have BMX riders come and perform on Friday, March 18th
Photo Credit Children's Museum of Houston
We’re working with San Sann, an American Ninja Warrior finalist who lives in Houston and has a gym here. We’re working with him to create the Extreme Challenge where each day one of his team members will do an extreme exercise and fire challenges, and we’ll pick out kids from the audience to do them in our courtyard.
Photo Credit Children's Museum of Houston
Is there anything else you’re wanting to promote right now or want families to know about the museum?
We want to let people know that we have free family night every Thursday year-round from 5-8 pm, also during Spring Break. It gives an opportunity for less fortunate families or families who are unsure of the museum to discover and explore the and possibly decide that they want a membership. The membership basically pays for itself in about 3 visits, and once you start using it, you’ll want to come back again and again for fun with your family.
