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  • 1.  Examples of ways caregivers improvise activities to engage children

    Posted 01-06-2025 07:49 AM

    Hi all. I am looking for some ideas. 

    I am writing a piece of interactive fiction located within a text-based simulation of the American Museum of Natural History in 1936 (demo here). You, as the reader, are a child going through the museum with your family. 

    I am looking to incorporate more moment where the caregivers engage the children through moments of improvised play: playing I Spy at an exhibit, sketching what they see, etc. 

    I am curious if you can share other examples I might draw from of the common innovations we see in our halls (or that our own caregivers figured out to do with us to help us connect with cultural institutions when we were young). 



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    Barry Joseph
    Founder
    Brooklyn Seltzer Museum
    Brooklyn NY
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  • 2.  RE: Examples of ways caregivers improvise activities to engage children

    Posted 01-07-2025 12:49 PM

    Barry, AMNH was one of the playgrounds of my youth. Not 1936 <s> but in the late 60's, friends and I, preteens, would be dropped off for the afternoon and left to ourselves to be picked up at a designated hour. I sometimes wonder if these wanderings are related to my interest in wayfinding. 

    In that context, my first thoughts: Mapmaking, Scavenger Hunts, and Orienteering. Would your format allow for that scope of spatial, pathmaking engagement. 

    Sounds like fun ! 



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    Margot Jacqz
    New York NY
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  • 3.  RE: Examples of ways caregivers improvise activities to engage children

    Posted 01-07-2025 05:48 PM

    Margot, That's lovely. And great ideas. Thank you! The 1960s should be my chapter 4...



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    Barry Joseph
    Founder
    Brooklyn Seltzer Museum
    Brooklyn NY
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Examples of ways caregivers improvise activities to engage children

    Posted 01-08-2025 08:44 AM

    Barry,  It sounds like a great project! When I worked at the Museum of Science in Boston, we had a lot of fun giving students a "bone dictionary" (an image or small model of a human skeleton) and having them search for similar bones in other animal skeletons.  I could imagine something like that in the dinosaur halls at AMNH.  We talked about form following function - and that a leg bone in human had to do a similar job to a leg bone in a T. rex.  

    Lynn 



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    Lynn Baum
    Principal
    Turtle Peak Consulting
    Seattle WA
    lbaum111@gmail.com
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