The Staten Island Children’s Museum

The Children’s Museum at Snug Harbor is a place where kids can learn by actively
doing, not just passively watching. The Museum is a place where children of all ages can
use their natural curiosity, creativity and imagination to explore many exciting aspects of the world around us. Since 1976 the Museum has given children the opportunity to enjoy a unique perspective on art, science and the humanities.

The Museum features an insect exhibit with a human size ant hill and a theatre complete with costumes and props for children to play with. At 3pm, children can feed the Museum’s collection of guinea pigs, fish, toads and bugs. The museum is also fronted by broad lawns which are perfect for games and picnics. In addition, Workshops,
performances and special events are presented year-round. (more…)

The Jewish children’s Museum in Brooklyn

The Jewish Children’s Museum is the largest Jewish-themed children’s museum in the United States. It aims for children of all faiths and backgrounds to gain a positive perspective and awareness of the Jewish heritage, fostering tolerance and understanding. The permanent collection features exhibits designed to be both educational and entertaining to children, often employing interactive multimedia. At the miniature golf course on the roof, for example, each hole represents a stage in Jewish life.

The museum is located in the Chasidic community of Crown Heights in Brooklyn, New York, near the headquarters of the Lubavitch movement. The museum is run by Tzivos Hashem, a Chabad organization dedicated to the education of Jewish children. The museum opened in 2004.

History

Largely due to the infamous Crown Heights riots in 1991 and the terrorist killing of 16 year old yeshiva student Ari Halberstam on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1994, Tzivos Hashem and City officials felt it neccesary to create a teaching tool for local children to better understand their neighbors.

Planning for the exhibit content was done with the input of various religious and secular educators with the final word being made by the Museum’s Orthodox Jewish directorate.

The original plans for the Museum exhibits were based upon the annual Jewish Children’s Expo sponsored and operated by Tzivos Hashem for six consecutive years in the 1980’s.

Community activist Devorah Halberstam, mother of Ari, played a major role in the Museum’s creation. The Museum is officially dedicated to Ari’s memory.

Key facts

- The Jewish Children’s Museum was designed by Gwathmey, Siegel and Associates Architects.

- The cost of construction has been $35 million thus far, with an additional $5 million projected after the completion of the fourth floor exhibits (expected fall of 2008).

- The Museum won the Building Brooklyn Award in 2006 for its design and social impact on the greater Brooklyn community.

- More than 250,000 visitors came to the JCM in its first year of operation

- In addition to its computerized and interactive exhibits, the JCM building includes a Kosher restaurant, gift shop, social hall, 100-seat theater, gameshow studio, arts and crafts center and computer rooms.

The building also houses two floors of office space for the many organizations under the umbrella of Tzivos Hashem International. These include: Friendship Circle, The Bat Mitzvah Club, The Moshiach Times Magazine and After School Program

Children’s Museum of the Arts

182 Lafayette Street
New York, NY 10012

Dedicated to helping children develop their full potential through the visual and performing arts, this wonderful museum features very special exhibits and activities and art programs just for kids between 18 months and 10 years old, and their families.

Exhibits and activities include The Artist Studio, where young artists participate in daily activities; the International Children’s Art Gallery; the Monet Ball Pond, Preschool Creative Play Area, for kids 4 and under to engage in dramatic play, imaginative art and creative relaxation; and Lines and Shapes, where kids use computer sketch pads to create shapes on a giant colorform wall. (more…)

Children’s Museum of Manhattan

The Children’s Museum of Manhattan was founded, under the name GAME (Growth Through Art and Museum Education), in 1973. With New York City in a deep fiscal crisis, and school art, music, and cultural programs eliminated, a loosely organized, highly creative group of artists and educators set up a basement storefront to serve Harlem and the Upper West Side. With a challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a city-owned courthouse was renovated into a small exhibition, studio, and workshop and renamed the Manhattan Laboratory Museum. The museum became the Children’s Museum of Manhattan in the 1980’s and moved to its current location in 1989.

The museum expanded exhibit and programming space adding a media center, an outdoor environmental center and an early childhood center. CMOM’s visibility and audience grew with the World of Pooh exhibit, created through a partnership with Disney. Wordplay, the first exhibit designed specifically for children 4 and younger opened. CMOM’s Executive Director, Andy Ackerman, served as president of the Association of Children’s Museum’s and hosted the 1999 ACM annual conference. In 2000, CMOM completed construction to add a new entrance, lobby, and supplement exhibit space. (more…)

Brooklyn Children’s Museum

145 Brooklyn Avenue
(at St. Mark’s Avenue)
Brooklyn, NY 11213

When it was established in 1899, people thought the Brooklyn Children’s Museum was an odd creation. A museum just for kids? Today, the recently renovated museum-the first of its kind in the world-remains a dynamic resource for children throughout the region. A menagerie of resident animal friends and a permanent collection of more than 20,000 natural science objects and cultural artifacts enliven exhibits and presentations.

Families

The Brooklyn Children’s Museum offers hands-on activities and programs for children and families. In Family Workshops, children and accompanying adults investigate plants, animals, science, culture and the arts. Visitors can attend Drop-in Gallery Workshops, where they examine subjects and themes that are highlighted in current exhibitions. Weekend special events include dance, music, theater and puppetry, all with a distinct multicultural influence. (more…)

Wave Hill

Wave Hill is a 28 acre (113,000 m²) botanical garden in New York City’s Riverdale neighborhood, situated in the Bronx, USA.

The original Wave Hill House was built in 1843 by William Lewis Morris in Greek Revival style, and owned from 1866-1903 by William Henry Appleton, who enlarged the house in 1866-69 and again in 1890. During these years, the house was visited by Thomas Henry Huxley, who helped Charles Darwin bring evolution to the public’s attention. Theodore Roosevelt’s family rented Wave Hill during the summers of 1870 and 1871, and Mark Twain leased it from 1901-1903. The house was then purchased in 1903 by George W. Perkins, a partner of J. P. Morgan, along with adjacent property. Perkins performed extensive landscaping on the site, and leased Wave Hill House itself to an eminent zoologist, Bashford Dean. Other famous residents included the conductor Arturo Toscanini (1942-1945) and chief members of the British Delegation to the United Nations (1950-1956). In 1960, the Perkins-Freeman family deeded Wave Hill to the City of New York. (more…)

The Staten Island Zoo

The Staten Island Zoo is New York City’s biggest little zoo, an oasis of nature and wildlife in Staten Island’s suburban landscape.

There is so much to see, do and experience at the Staten Island Zoo, whether you are
young or old, a nature and wildlife enthusiast or just looking to broaden your horizons. From enjoying the multitude of animal exhibits from servals to emus to partaking in the very popular seasonal events such as SPOOKTACULARand Staten Island’s first-ever Italian festival, FESTA ITALIANA, to debut this June, the Zoo is a place for families, friends, and neighbors to come together. (more…)

Queens Botanical Garden

43-50 Main Street
Flushing, NY 11355

Note: at the time of this writing (August 2006), QBG is building a new visitor/administration center on the grounds. The Garden will remain open to the public during construction, however, visitors should call ahead for possible changes in parking areas and entrances to the Garden.

Beginning with a five-acre exhibit, Gardens on Parade, in the 1939 New York World’s Fair, the Queens Botanical Garden Society was incorporated in 1946. Today it fulfills its goals of providing beautiful public gardens to the people of Queens and offering horticultural information and education to amateur gardeners.

Since moving to its present location in 1963, the QBG has grown into a major cultural and educational facility offering several major divisions: Demonstration Gardens — a resource for amateur home gardeners — include the Beach, Rock, Pergola, Patio, Wooded, and Fountain Gardens. A three-acre Wedding Garden is a Victorian Garden featuring the style of 19th century English gardens. More than ten thousand couples have used this garden on their wedding day. The six-acre Charles H. Perkins Memorial Rose Garden is the largest rose garden in the northeast. (more…)

New York Hall of Science

47-01 111th Street
Flushing Meadows, NY 11368

The New York Hall of Science has a reputation, spread from parent to parent and teacher to teacher, for being one of the best field trip destinations. New York’s only hands-on science and technology center, NYHOS may be the standard to meet for science exhibitions, and with over 150 fascinating exhibits, it’s a hard act to follow.

Exhibits are grouped into several major areas, some of which are:
Seeing the Light: an exploration of color and light sponsored by IBM, where visitors can cast a colored shadow, blow a giant soap bubble, and more. Includes daily laser demonstrations.
Realm of the Atom: the world’s first 3-D, working model of a hydrogen atom. (more…)

New York Botanical Garden

The New York Botanical Garden is a prestigious botanical garden in New York City. One of the premier botanical gardens in the United States, it spans some 240 acres of Bronx Park in the borough of The Bronx and is home to some of the world’s leading plant laboratories.

The Garden was founded in 1891 on part of the grounds of the Belmont Estate, formerly owned by the tobacco magnate Pierre Lorillard, after a fund-raising campaign led by Columbia University botanist Nathaniel Lord Britton, who was inspired to emulate the Royal Botanic Gardens in London.

The Garden is located at East 200th Street and Kazimiroff Boulevard and contains 48 different gardens and plant collections. Sightseers can easily spend a day admiring the serene cascade waterfall, wetlands and a 50 acre (200,000 m²) tract of never-harvested oaks, American beeches, cherry, birch, tulip and white ash trees - some more than two centuries old. (more…)