Children can learn, play at new Exploration Place gallery

Fifteen years after Exploration Place opened, a new generation of toddlers and preschoolers will have a new permanent gallery devoted to them and the way they learn.

“For a young child it’s all about discovering, exploring, investigating, using their senses, opening up their mind to learn and experience different things,” said Jan Luth, president of the children’s museum and science center in downtown Wichita.

“That becomes the foundation that makes them open to those STEM subjects when they’re in elementary school and beyond.”

Kansas Kids Connect, a new exhibit designed for children 5 and under, opens Sept. 12. The gallery, financed with more than $500,000 in donations, replaces Tots’ Spot and is the first new permanent exhibit to premiere at Exploration Place since it opened in 2000.

Walking into the 2,000-square-foot exhibit space, the changes are as clear as the color on the walls – a bright sky blue peppered with fluffy clouds and a cheerful orange sun. Designed by experts in early childhood education, the space explores agricultural themes such as weather, crops and wind energy with a variety of hands-on play spaces.

Inside the “Seed to Sun” wall, the gallery’s centerpiece, youngsters can explore layers of earth to see how wheat grows – crawling through a “dirt” tunnel, turning the cranks on a pretend combine, singing along with birds and walking through waves of golden wheat fashioned from rope and pool noodles.

Elsewhere they can plant a garden, fix a tractor, build a windmill, shop at a farmers market, cook a meal, design a cityscape or nestle inside a giant meadowlark nest.

It’s designed for fun, Luth said, but also to encourage youngsters’ interest in science, technology, engineering and math.

“If you’re trying to build a STEM workforce in your community, in your state, in this country, it starts in preschool,” she said.

Research shows that by the time children hit third grade, they “either like science and math or they don’t like science and math,” Luth said.

“This is our way of being at the very start of that pipeline. … You’ve got to start when they’re really young, and you’ll have a larger pool of children interested in those STEM subjects.”

This story was originally published August 28, 2015 at 3:35 PM with the headline "Children can learn, play at new Exploration Place gallery."