Children’s Museum Demonstrations

By Emily Stark

Since 2018, the Psychology Department at Minnesota State University, Mankato has partnered with the Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota to share demonstrations of psychological science to children and families attending the museum. Psychology faculty worked with the Museum directors and staff to develop a list of potential demonstrations on topics such as sensation and perception, emotion recognition, or brains and neurons. Then, undergraduate students in psychology courses developed lesson plans for these demonstrations focusing on play-based engagement.

Demonstrations like making neurons out of pipe cleaners and brains out of Play-doh are fun and encourage children to become curious about science with PLAY! The students created lists of appropriate vocabulary words and plans for how to talk about these concepts with both very young and school-aged children while engaging the children with these play-based activities. Students realized it was less about teaching children concepts and more about making children excited to learn through discovery. Once demonstrations were prepared, the undergraduate students spent a day at the museum presenting these to families and children.

Student Takeaways!

• Students improved their abilities to communicate psychological science

• Students engaged children and their families in psychological science

Valuable connections were made between our university and the community.

Recommendations for Outreach

• Get students involved by selecting and creating demonstrations

• Integrate project development into psychology courses

• Ask department or university administrative offices for funding. After all, the outreach is very good for the university’s community connection

• Work closely with community partners to align their mission with the project goals. Here, the museum directors had very thorough recommendations for the demonstrations, including which topics would be allowed to be presented (for example, they didn’t want a demonstration about aggression), and the components of the demonstrations (being aware of food allergies when developing a taste demonstration). Their support allowed this project to be a success, and by being respectful of their space and their values, we have formed a stronger partnership with the museum and have confidence that this project will be able to continue in future years.

It is important to note that there are other methods of outreach—departments without a museum in their city could create a psychology day on their own campus, or work with local grade schools or high schools to bring demonstration into the school. Overall, students, faculty, and the museum directors all found this project to be a positive way to engage students as well as the public, develop communication skills, and build awareness of the science of psychology.