Children’s Museum Experiences: Enhancing Literacy Development

By Kimberly Sonderman Padilla, Content Manager
Children’s Museum of Tacoma

In addition to providing an opportunity for good old-fashioned fun, a visit to a children’s museum offers multiple avenues for enhancing literacy and language development. Through rich environments, meaningful self-guided discovery and, most important, adult interaction, children expand content-specific vocabulary, learn new ways of expressing themselves both verbally and non-verbally, and are exposed to a variety of fun ways to learn new information. Here are a few things you can to help enhance your child’s literacy development through a visit to a children’s museum.

Read to your child. Most museums have a variety of signs, text panels and exhibit labels to help inform visitors about content or provide instructions or activity suggestions. Read information and share it with your child in a way that is consistent with his/her developmental level. An eight year old may be able to read along when prompted, “Look! Let’s see what this signs says we can do…” While a two year old just needs to know, “Hey! This signs says we can ___.” Point out that you are reading to get information, an important skill used in all areas of life.

Listen to your child. Let your child know you are interested in what’s being said by asking questions and then listening carefully. You model appropriate interaction when you ask questions to get more information, remain quiet for him to respond, affirm or counter a presented idea, and respond to indicate understanding. Listening with interest encourages your child to communicate with you.

Talk to your child! Children ask a lot of questions because they have so much to learn and they know you can help them! Encourage your child to talk about what s/he is doing. Comment on what you see happening. Ask open ended questions that encourage discussion. By conversing with, singing to, and telling stories to your child, you can expose him/her to a range of vocabulary. This vocabulary includes facial expression and physical gestures, appropriate eye contact, as well as a variety of tonal inflection.

Recapture your visit. In the car on your way home from the museum talk about what your child’s favorite activities were and why. With older children, a recap conversation following each visit could highlight a “best favorite” and “what I want to do next time.” With younger children, you can reinforce vocabulary and sequencing by talking about the activities in which your child engaged and the order in which they occurred. Once home, you can continue by drawing pictures of a favorite activity and help build vocabulary by titling the picture and labeling items. This can help the child share their experience with other family members and friends.

Extend your experience. Capitalize on your child’s interests by investigating online resources, reading topically related books or doing related activities following your visit. For example, if your child seemed particularly interested in Café Ole, a feature of the Children’s Museum of Tacoma’s Grubby Gardeners exhibit, a visit to a local Latin market and a read of Patricia Grossman’s Saturday Market to further language building and learning.

Parent Play Guides available in each exhibit at the Children’s Museum of Tacoma, offer a variety of ways for adults to help enrich their children’s play while at the Museum. Each guide provides an overview of the exhibit content, a list of vocabulary, highlights of what children learn while engaging exhibit activities, suggestions for at home activities, and Internet and library resources to extend learning. Look for these guides on your next visit to the Museum or, if visiting another children’s museum, ask if they are available. While museum produced guides help to enrich your experience, if no guides are available your attentive and enthusiastic involvement is sure to delight your child and help to make your visit both meaningful and memorable.

For more information about the Children's Museum of Tacoma, click here.