After a successful run in 2024, The Family Room is returning to the Hall of Wonder at Mid-America Science Museum, 500 Mid America Blvd., starting Sunday, March 1.
The exhibit, which was designed and built by the museum staff, was first introduced in 2024 and took familiar intergenerational family activities and transformed them into large-scale, hands-on challenges.
“Think of classics from childhood, just very analog childhood,” Kayla Ingle, the museum’s education director, said.
“So pre-hardcore video games and all that, staying at families, playing with your cousins, things like that — Legos, building blanket forts, doing paper airplanes, just doing stuff inside the house that were fun, but on a bigger scale and maybe not something you get to do at home as much anymore, but we have this big space to do this in now,” she said.
While some favorites, such as the giant Connect 4 and tic-tac-toe, Baggo and building blanket forts, are returning, there are plenty of new activities this year. A magnetic jumbo Mr. Potato Head, a larger-than-life KerPlunk game, a rainbow golf tee pegboard and a Noodle Wall are among the new options.
“It’s like a peg board on the wall, and you can place pool noodles on it,” she said. “You can arch them, and some of them are cut. … I think that one’s going to be a real fun one for kids.”
Ingle said one she is looking forward to is the Noodle Wall.
“That one I’m just interested in because it is weird,” she said. “It looks like fun. I had fun going to the store and buying 50 pool noodles and getting weird looks in February. So that was fun, too.”
There are some additions to the blanket fort this year as well.
“I think the blanket fort is also going to be fun,” Ingle said. “We’ve got new stuff to add to it, so it’s PVC pipes that kids can build their own forts with it, and they have different connectors. And then we’ve got lots of different sheets and all different sizes so they can — sky’s the limit as how big they want to do this fort.”
While many exhibits in the Hall of Wonder are traveling exhibits, The Family Room was designed and built in-house, Ingle said. Justin Pasley, the museum’s chief facilities officer, led the team designing the exhibit.
“Our tech team does a really amazing job at building these exhibits,” she said. “They turned out a lot of these things within just a couple of weeks. … (Pasley is) over the tech exhibits, and he does an amazing job. All the stuff he’s built was very nice, very clean, very professional looking.”
Diane LaFollette, the museum’s CEO, said bringing families together helps encourage learning.
“Our team started with the kinds of activities families already love to do together and thought about how we could make them bigger and more hands-on,” she said in a news release.
“With spring break coming up, many families are looking for something fun they can experience together. This exhibit gives them the chance to build, experiment and play in the same space. When families are engaged, trying new things and figuring them out side by side, the learning happens naturally,” LaFollette said.
The exhibit runs through March 31, and admission to the exhibit is included with a ticket to the museum. Tickets are available at http://midamericamuseum.org or by calling 501-767-3461.
