Play Is More Than Just Fun at Philadelphia's Children's Museum

What if you could change a child’s life by allowing them to discover the power of learning through play? 

The Please Touch Museum in the heart of Philadelphia's museum district has made this their mission. In collaboration with Generation Mindful, the museum takes a bold step forward in creating a world where all children are able to exercise creativity, compassion, confidence, and social-emotional skills as it opens its new exhibitXOXO: The Exhibit About Love And Forgiveness.

“More than ever, research shows the necessity of play in the social, emotional, and cognitive development of children,” said Patricia D. Wellenbach, President and CEO of the Please Touch Museum. “We work to create a space that cultivates curiosity and engages children and caregivers alike.” 

The Please Touch Museum is where lifelong learning begins and where every child is welcome. Brains are built through the work of the child, and the work of the child is play. “We want our museum to be a leader in children’s museums as a key resource through learning through play and to expand our reach and impact in the Philadelphia region and beyond.” 

To uphold these values, the Please Touch Museum consists of interactive exhibits, programs, and special events that allow children to discover, learn and play to develop the intellectual, social and emotional skills they need to succeed in school, and life at large. 

The museum has 11 core exhibits, some of which include:  

• Healthy Me - Children can experience a supermarket, tend an urban garden, and assemble tasty sandwiches in their bistro. 
• Wonderland - Children are able to use their imaginations to guide them through the magic of a hedge maze and a hall of mirrors. 
• Imagination Playground - Possibilities for endless play are provided as children create with Magnatiles and foam blocks. 
• Storytime Cabin - Children are able to take a break and read a book as they cozy up to a fireplace. 
• Roadside Attractions - Children can build their own cars, invent their own flavors in an ice cream stand, look through a helicopter camera, and navigate the driver’s seat of a SEPTA bus. 
• Please Touch Garden - When the weather is warm, children are able to walk the garden, smell herbs, and play outdoor tic tac toe. 

The Please Touch Museum also has 25,000 historical toys, games and more to spark creativity and imagination through their collections: 

• Childlife Collection
• Contemporary Toy Collection
• Art Collection
• Contemporary Installations

As of this month, the Please Touch Museum has a new exhibit, as gifted from the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, called XOXO: An Exhibit About Love and Forgiveness, which opened February 8th and runs through May 10, 2020. This experience allows children and caregivers the opportunity to explore feelings through a variety of interactive components designed to help them understand the power of noticing and naming their emotions in honest, constructive ways. The XOXO exhibit focuses on reminding the community that they are loved and that they are also capable of loving others. 

“As the US grapples with increased rates of depression among adolescents and teenagers, it is imperative that we begin to teach children to better understand and share their emotions from the youngest age possible,” Wallenbach says. “Learning about emotions and empathy is equally important to learning about literacy, STEM, fine motor skills, and more.”

As visitors walk through the exhibit, several playful exploration opportunities are available. The first stop is a Quiet Zone. With the use of Generation Mindful’s Time-In-Toolkit, the Quiet Zone allows children to take a break and rest their bodies. This zone has a calming corner, which is adorned with a bean bag chair, children’s books, a feelings poster, and several SnuggleBuddies to enhance connection and invite co-regulation.

With a focus on teaching children the importance of identifying, appreciating, and expressing their emotions, XOXO further elevates the Museum’s mission of learning through play with some of the exhibit’s stations: 

• Art Making - Children can make a gift to show someone they care about them. 
• Seesaw - Children can work together to balance on a seesaw or connect an infinite Story Puzzle.
• Face Blocks - Children can build and explore a variety of facial expressions using Empathy Blocks.
• Tone Phones - Children can speak into the Tone Phones and watch their voice affect shapes projected on a screen. 
• Reflexion Table - Children can take a break, moving slowly to hear music. 
• Release the negative - Children can draw or write down something that they feel angry or sad about and then crank it through the paper shredder to release the emotion. 
• Response Wall - Children can write or draw their feelings and post them on the wall. This creates a sense of community, showing children that they are not alone in feeling different emotions and that it is safe to feel. 
• Silhouettes - Children are able to trace the shadow of a friend using a unique set-up of lightboxes. 
• Story Puzzle - Children can tell a story about their life using puzzle pieces that have words and pictures on them to help the child express thoughts and feelings. 
• Tokens of Love - Children are able to create a token by writing down a memory and thought and putting it through a special machine. 

Wallenbach shares, “Over the next three months, we encourage families to visit this fun yet important exhibit, which reminds us of the power of love and the need to connect to others.