Play Conditions: A Framework

MUSEUM NOTES

Jeanne Vergeront

Vergeront Museum Planning

Photo credit: Vergeront (WonderTrek)

Play Conditions are a bit like Robinsyard. Robinsyard, you ask? 

When my nephew Matthew was 4 years old, he carried a small rolled up piece of paper tucked into a yarn belt that he liked to wear. I asked him what had he drawn on the paper and he replied, “Robinsyard.” I knew he had a friend name Robin, but I didn’t know what a Syard was. So, I asked, “What’s a Syard?” Matthew replied, “I don’t know but Robin has one.” After some mulling about what a Syard might be, I guessed that it was Robin’s Yard. The precise meaning is not so critical. What is important is that: 

 Play conditions are like Robinsyard: It’s hard to explain what they are, but we have them. And play conditions have meaning in children’s lives. 

We may not have precise terms for play conditions, a shared vocabulary, or a taxonomy for them. (We don’t really have a definition of play, either.) We do, however, have a sense of when play conditions are just right: when children are engaged actively, deeply, and joyously in play—play that they direct and find enjoyable. That’s when play conditions are well tuned. Conversely, when interactions are few, focus and attention is brief, conflict is frequent, children’s affect is flat, and ambience is bland, play conditions are out-of-whack with the intentions for the experience, the space, and those children. 

Play doesn’t happen independently of the conditions surrounding it. Since we think, in general, very little about the conditions that encourage exploring, playing, and learning, we are hazy about just what they are and how to harness them. For about the last 10 years, I’ve been exploring the idea of play conditions in planning work, learning frameworks, and master plans. Currently, I am part of a team at WonderTrek Children’s Museum, an emerging museum in north central Minnesota, working with play conditions in a collaborative question-driven, iterative process that explores, documents, and shares insights from children in play-based settings. 

This work is giving shape to a framework that helps get at the complexity and simplicity of

Photocredit: Vergeront (MIA)

 play and play conditions. Starting with working definitions, this framework acknowledges related concepts, identifies a set of play conditions, and frames principles that tell us something about the nature of these play conditions. 

While the framework focuses on play conditions, it is relevant to shaping spaces and experiences in every kind of museum as well as encouraging inquiry and learning. In fact, museum planners, developers, designers, and educators often draw on qualities and varied conditions in creating exhibits, environments, and programs that engage visitors— but they may not be doing so intentionally nor focusing on play. 

Play and Play Conditions 

Exploring play conditions relies on having a shared understanding of play among staff, team, or partners. This can be challenging. Affected by age, setting, and who’s controlling it, play is not always easy to recognize. It is connected to exploration and learning which children seem to move between seamlessly. Definitions of play are abundant as well. One I am drawn to places the child at the center and works across varied contexts. Play is freely chosen, personally directed, and intrinsically motivated. 

Viewing play conditions as the qualities or variables of the physical and social environments that are likely to encourage (or discourage) and support children’s play accommodates this definition of play and others. It also recognizes that there can be conditions that interfere with play. 

Photo credit: Vergeront (CMOM)

Play conditions share some qualities with the concept of affordance, the features or property of an object that define its possible uses or how it can or should be used. A chair’s properties afford sitting or standing on it. An affordance provides strong cues about the operation of things. It is an actionable and discoverable possibility. In some design contexts like user-interface, an affordance prompts users to take specific actions. 

While play conditions may include affordances, they are not limited to physical features nor are they directive. More than 3-dimensional space, physical design, furniture, or arrangement, play condition’s qualities are also temporal, social, and affective. They tap into all senses, give cues, and suggest possibilities. Neither a recipe nor a formula, nor a way of scripting children’s play, play conditions are as open-ended as play itself. 

Seven Play Conditions 

An understanding of play conditions emerges from what research, child development, play theory and museum practices suggest will encourage and support children’s exploration, play, and learning in informal learning settings. Dimensions such as space, materials, relationships, and provocations, salient to different aspects of play, help in understanding play conditions. Observations, imagination, and intuition add to this knowledge, filling gaps and inviting us to think together. 

By separating and clustering these dimensions, we discover examples and possibilities, and begin to examine and manipulate play conditions in intentional and new ways. Seven play conditions are summarized below. Each is characterized by the general role it plays, its valued qualities, and a small sample of possibilities. 

• Image of the Child is about the child’s strengths and capabilities and means engaging children at their highest level of ability; and making their strengths and capabilities visible. 
• Valued qualities are: children’s curiosity, capabilities, social disposition, caring and empathy 
• Possibilities that support and reflect the child’s capabilities: choices for one child and different choices for different children; traces of children’s thinking, doing, and making; focus on shared interests, etc. 

• Context or Setting is about both physical and social space, ranging from macro to micro, where children can explore, play, and learn. 
• Valued qualities are: safe, welcoming and accessible settings 
• Possibilities for shaping settings: different scales, large and small spaces; light and sound; recognizable features; wayfinding clues; edges that define and differentiate areas, etc. 

•  Invitation to Explore is about arranging selected elements to provoke or encourage children to notice and wonder, explore ideas—without giving too much direction. 
• Valued qualities are: sparking curiosity; the child taking the experience where it needs to go; offering something worth noticing and discovering 
• Possibilities for encouraging exploration: something fascinating; questions incongruities; multiple provocations; a sound walk, etc. 

• Materials and Objects is about loose parts, tools, phenomena, art materials, digital media, etc. that give children agency and choice; encourage exploration and experimentation that is physical, social, emotional, cognitive, and linguistic; that generate new possibilities; and reveal new perspectives and insights about the world. 
• Valued qualities are materials that support children’s agency, promote noticing and wondering; change with use and generate new insights; work at multiple ages
• Possibilities for materials: engage some and sometimes all the senses; are real stuff; can be carried, lined up, and moved; change with use, etc. 

• Relationships is about children and adults engaging with others; feeling a sense of

  

  Photo credit: Vergeront (Madison Children's Museum)

  welcome, respect, and connection 
• Valued qualities foster social connections, value the individual and the group, are collaborative 
• Possibilities for connecting: exchanging ideas among children; scaffolding; conversation; multiple places and positions, roles or seating, etc. 

• Content is based in children’s interests and what is fascinating and meaningful to them about the world 
• Valued qualities are interdisciplinary content; implicit content from child development; meaningful connections for the child 
• Possibilities for engaging with content: comes through the senses, is embedded in the world, is released through interactions, can be experienced from different points of view, etc. 

• Time is about a sense of open and unregulated play; time to direct play, follow an activity to a satisfying moment, and find enjoyment
• Valued qualities are children deciding when play starts and ends; play stretching out over time
• Possibilities for opening up time come from discouraging distractions and interruptions; allowing experiences to come to a natural end 

 A set of play conditions with examples helps us move away from predictable approaches towards deliberately thought through play set-ups. Working with play conditions nudges us into thinking in the languages of space, materials, relationships, and provocations and developing new ways of thinking. Considering possible play conditions slows us down from leaping to a finished idea or design. We see how play conditions, like children’s play, lean into and interact with one another, virtually seamlessly. We realize, for instance, how Materials are instrumental in creating an Invitation to Explore; how Materials prompt conversations which support Relationships; and how the Image of the Child and Time can’t be separated from other conditions. Finally, play conditions tell us as much about inviting rich play as they do about getting out of the way of children’s play. 

Ten Principles of Play Conditions 

Bringing a play conditions approach into creating opportunities for play takes time. It can be a new way of thinking. Integrating the approach into existing practices can involve problem solving and collaboration, backing up and starting over. Tailoring specific play conditions, these or others, to your context, whether for indoor or outdoor play, is always an on-going process. Paying attention to the following 10 principles along the way will provide support and add to your insights. Play conditions: 

1. Are always present, whether we are aware of them or not, and whether they are favorable to play or not.  

2. Impact children’s agency in their play. Play conditions can let the child direct the play, allow children to make of their play what they need to—or play conditions can interfere with play. 

3. Span all scales. From the full volume of a space, to the smallest loose parts, to open sight lines, to the ambiance of a space, play conditions are all sizes and proportions.

 

4. Are more than objects and more than space, more than the architecture, design and decoration. They are tangible and intangible.

 

Photo credit: Jim Roe (SMM)

5. Interact with one another as well as with children making the conditions fluid and dynamic. There is no one, or right, way to create play conditions. 

6. Induce something to happen, not by removing choices, but by creating the conditions that will increase the chances that children will engage deeply in play. 

7. Balance intentions for the experience with opening up possibilities, creating a place between what we think might happen and what we don’t yet know is possible. 

8. Require imagining to build a picture of what might happen if...; how a particular possibility might interact with other qualities and how children might engage with it. 

9. Come into clearer focus over time. Children are teaching us about play conditions all the time. We can learn by observing, listening, imagining, and reflecting on what they show us. 

10. Are more than the sum of their parts. 

What Happens When… 

Working with play conditions is, fundamentally, forming a hypothesis, or a succession of hypotheses about the relationship between children’s play and ways to support the place and processes of play. While not causal, relationships are operating. And while we don’t know what’s going to elicit play, with practice we can be more attuned to these connections and, increasingly, use them deliberately. 

Prompted by an exploratory question or experiential goal, play conditions help us in shifting from our hopes for play in general to lived experiences of deep, enjoyable, play that engages children’s bodies, minds, and feelings. We begin with conjuring up openings for play with our wonderings. How might we engage children in investigating properties of found objects and using them in their play? What materials might encourage children to change their physical space? How can we support children in setting challenges and taking risks? How do children share their ideas with one another? 

As we interrogate the content of play conditions, reflect on past experiences, observe children 

Photo credit: Snarkitecture

at play in varied settings, we have new hunches, generate possibilities, find fresh combinations, and ask another “what if?” question. We begin to discover, and hypothesize about, connections between the presence of certain features and children’s play. We build theories—temporary explanations—that express what might happen when particular qualities or variables of the physical and social environment are brought together. These hypotheses and mini-theories about places for play help us keep track of this world we are creating with children for play. 

Over time, we test, improve, and edit our understandings of the conditions that encourage the kind of play that we hope children will enjoy—rich, flexible, and full of possibilities for them to discover. 

Museum Notes 

• Experimental Mindset
• Experience Goals for Exhibitions
• Listening to How Children See Their World
• When Play’s the Thing 
• The Museum Environment as Teacher
• In Between Research, Theory and Practice 

The Museum Environment as Teacher

What does this space say about learning?
(Photo credit: Atelier of water Energy: Agriturismo Il Ginepro)

Twenty-five years ago I first came across the image of the environment as the third teacher in a brochure for The Hundred Languages of Children exhibit from the Municipal Schools in Reggio Emilia (IT). I was intrigued and delighted with the idea that the environment, along with parents and the teacher, was understood to promote the child’s well-being, offer learning opportunities, and support independence, in beautiful, thoughtfully arranged settings.  

The idea wasn’t new to me. My graduate work had focused on the relationship between humans and the environment, between behavior and space. This vivid image, however, expanded my thinking and inspired me to imagine ways in which museum learning spaces could be harnessed for learning.  

The Environments of Our Lives

Environments are the lived-in containers of our lives. They are the spaces we inhabit, that shelter and protect us, inspire and give us pleasure. They make both daily life and grand occasions possible. At all points in the lifespan, environments represent an emergent context and force that shape behavior, inform choices, and deliver information.

The physical environment is more than the shape of a space or its full volume. It is more than the arrangement of furniture, the materials and finishes that cover surfaces, the combinations of walls and openings, light and sound. Our environment surrounds us. We engage with it directly, on many levels, and throughout our lives.

What does this space say about learning?
(Milwaukee Art Museum. Photo credit: Vergeront)

Contexts layered with meaning, environments signal what goes on in a space and at successive scales. This is a playground; that is a place to worship; this is a place for commercial exchange, that is a public gathering space, a place for sports, or a private, personal space. Scale and the configuration of space; qualities of light, sound, and smells; materials and surfaces add to the broad clues of function. Is this school welcoming? Is this park safe? Can I accomplish my tasks? Can I stay here and explore?

Although clearly physical, built and natural environments are also emotional, social, and cognitive spaces. They affect us across a range of emotions, making us feel at ease or anxious, competent or inadequate, motivated or discouraged. Some spaces encourage social interactions; they bring us together, facilitate connections, and invite conversations; and other spaces isolate us. We can be intellectually invigorated by our surroundings, intrigued by materials and objects that encourage us to ask questions, have ideas, investigate, and pursue choices.

An environment may be consistent with our expectations, facilitate our intentions, and support our capabilities. Sometimes, however, its goals–or those of its creators–are at odds with our own. The interaction of features, materials, light, and sound can be problematic; they can challenge our understanding of where we are and how to find our way. While soft, ambient sounds can create a soothing backdrop to conversation, loud sounds amplified by hard surfaces make conversation difficult, especially for people with limited hearing.

Surroundings with a sense of soul that resonate deeply with our own invite us to linger while a soulless container hurries us to leave. Across all domains, environments can facilitate or interfere with a feeling of well-being, a sense of accomplishment, rewarding interactions with others, and bold imaginings.

Ever-present, Reaching, and Teaching

While the concept of the environment as the third teacher emerges from the schools in Reggio, this idea is neither limited to children nor to schools and Italy.

Art, history, science, natural history, or children’s museums, historic houses or zoos; indoor or outdoor, purpose built or adapted spaces are functional and experiential entities with purpose. At least since the 1992 publication of the Association of American Museum’s Excellence and Equity, education has been recognized as central to museums' public service.

What does this space say about learning?
(Children's Museum of Southern Minnesota. Photo credit: Vergeront)

Museums advance their learning interests and serve their learners using a wide array of opportunities and resources. Text and labels; demonstrations, lectures and programs; objects and collections; curricula and interpretation; blogs and digital resources; phenomena and planned discovery are familiar approaches to learning in museums.

Museum visitors, however, are not just learners when they are in a classroom or reading a label. Like all learners, they are minds-on, senses-on, hands-on learners engaging directly with their surroundings and with others wherever they are and whatever they are doing. Even when shopping, standing in line, or relaxing in areas a museum doesn’t think of as educational, visitors are sensing, thinking, and learning.

And the environment is ever-present, reaching and teaching them. Space and scale; sound and light; visual and physical access; materials, textures, colors, and objects are encouraging exploration, facilitating connections with others and with ideas, and supporting meaning making. Conversely, these same features may be discouraging curiosity, interfering with connections, and overwhelming the senses. 

The environment may speak louder than words, labels, and intentions to children and adults in how the museum:

• … is welcoming, creates a sense of belonging, puts them at ease; and assures safety;

• … values learners as competent, active agents in their own learning;

• … supports values such as creativity, caring, inclusiveness, or experimentation;

• … engages the learner’s curiosity and interests and removes barriers to participation;

• … encourages connections and promotes enjoyable interactions among visitors and with staff;

• … increases comfort and relieves fatigue;

• … creates ways for learners to see traces of their doing, thinking, and learning;

• … offers opportunities to explore, browse, reflect;

• … values alternative perspectives and learning in different ways;

• … creates moments of delight and beauty.

Harnessing the Environment for Learning

There are points in a museum’s life when it does focus deliberately on its environment from various perspectives. Typically this is when a museum constructs a new building, remodels a space, reconfigures the entry and lobby, opens an exhibition, adds a maker space, or upgrades exhibit components. A museum team, often working with architects and designers, considers the size and shape of a space, how it must work for its primary purpose and users, adjacencies and flow of spaces, the look and feel of the space, the furniture and equipment needed. After the opening, the space shifts to operations mode with regular cleaning and scheduled maintenance. Taking stock of the space is unlikely until the next remodel.

But spaces are dynamic. As living systems that morph over time, affected by use, misuse, and inevitable micro

What does this space say about learning?
(NYSCi. Photo credit: Andrew Kelly)

changes, museum spaces evolve. Strategic goals change, program schedules and formats are adjusted, visitor patterns shift, and new technologies arrive as the old disappear. Some spaces groan from over use, some are under-used, and some attract unwelcome activities.

The environment is an essential element of a museum’s learning value and its public service. Harnessing this great potential to serve its learners relies on a museum understanding its own learning interests, being attuned to the environment, and integrating these insights into museum-wide procedures, practices, and decisions. This on-going work requires the perspective of people from across the museum: designers, educators, visitor service, operations, and facilities staff. And visitors. The following practices work together and inform one another to help accomplish this.

1. Align museum goals and interests with the environment. Museums have goals, values, and guiding principles. They may aspire to be a more connected community, inspire innovation, strengthen families, or promote wellbeing. By identifying examples of how these driving principles can–and do–play out in the environment, a museum builds a shared vocabulary around the environment as teacher that contributes to experience planning, operations, and increasing impact. (See # 2, 4 & 5)  

2. Build space planning into experience planning. Each step in experience planning is an opening to focusing on how qualities and features of the environment can support learning. For instance, if a museum wants the visitor to try something new or take a risk, what conditions must be present for someone to experience a situation as safe, recognize new pathways, and perceive invitations to be creative? (See # 1 & 3)

3. Design, Not Rules and Signs. What museums hope to encourage visitors to do can be facilitated or obstructed by the environment; even a single feature can interfere with safety, comfort, or access. Spaces may create a bottleneck; invite racing, chasing, climbing; tempt leaning on cases. A museum can make rules and put up signs. Or it can address the problem through design solutions and decisions about the environment. (See # 2 & 4)

What does this space say about learning?
(Photo credit: New-York Historical Society Museum and Library)

4. Modify spaces based on information. Understanding how a space is informing the learning that takes place emerges from information and insights. Observation, asking questions, and listening to visitors help identify the physical qualities that encourage learning. Where is the flow of activity, traffic, and interactions positive and humming? What qualities are present? These insights can inform the vocabulary, experience planning, and dialogues about space. (See # 2, 3 & 5)

5. Open dialogues about museum spaces. Conversation among staff, volunteers, members, community partners, people of different ages, backgrounds, and abilities expands the environment’s capacity to support learning. These exchanges may probe what the environment says about the museum’s view of learning, how learning opportunities are best supported, and possible improvements. When a museum and its friends explore these questions together, a bigger, more visible view of the museum environment as teacher develops. (See #1 and #4)

What does your museum environment say about learning?

Related Museum Notes Posts

• The Museum Entry Experience

• Observation: Seeing Un-seeing, and Re-seeing

• More Varied Places for Children

… we value space for its power to organize, promote pleasant relationships between children of different ages, create a handsome environment, provide changes, promote choices and activity and its potential for sparking all kinds of social and affective learning. All this contributes to a sense of well-being and security in children.

Loris Malaguzzi

Explore Yellowstone: A Gateway Experience

Fishing at Lake Yellowstone

Museums often create and offer what they consider gateway experiences. These are experiences that open doors to a museum and its collections, to foundational ideas, or to new places and adventures. Explore Yellowstone at the Museum of the Rockies (MOR) in Bozeman (MT) is a gateway experience for children and adults to the Museum and to Yellowstone National Park (WY) about 100 miles south.

The need for more space for young children and families was identified during MOR’s strategic planning process. In addition to member families expressing an interest in more spaces for young children throughout the museum, MOR recognized an opportunity to better serve families in the Gallatin Valley as well. A new space created out of a loft gallery for art on the museum’s mezzanine level was selected to replace a smaller existing children’s play space. In 2006 serious exhibit planning began. A collaborative process involved initial design work by Lexington Design, content and interpretive work with the National Park Service at Yellowstone Park, and an in-house education, design and fabrication team. The re-conceptualized space for infants through children eight-year olds opened in June 2010.

Explore Yellowstone’s focus on the science and natural wonders of Yellowstone Park and the Northern Rocky Mountains is engaging to children, respectful of them, and interesting to adults. Knowledge of both science and young children is well balanced. A strong sense of place grounds the exhibit. Areas inspired by the region and made famous by the Park invite children to explore, engage, and make connections. A skillful mix of experience and play affords a range of learning experiences. Authenticity and accuracy are delivered with a knowing touch. Solid content is always present, supporting the experience without driving it. When used, text covers content concisely and in intriguing ways, for instance explaining mudpots and cooking fish on geysers.

Immersive Experiences, Connected Play

Designers have created immersive experiences rather than designing immersive environments in the exhibit’s Campsite, Fishing Bridge, Lodge, iconic Geyser Basin, Fire Tower, and Yellowstone Grand Canyon. In immersive experiences, there is just enough design and detail to suggest a time and place, perhaps a season or time of day. Internal relationships are kept in tact, accurate, and reinforced by structures, materials, and features. Context supports the learner and visitor experience–the direct, social, emotional, physical, and cognitive engagement in a situation or setting.

Bringing smell to the scenic landscape

Explore Yellowstone does this with design restraint, realism, authenticity, and a high regard for sensory cues to establish a sense of place. Animal sounds come from trees; smells of a forest fire can be released near the Fire Tower. The essence of a park lodge comes from pine log walls, rustic furniture, and a stone fireplace that feels massive to young children.

Painted wall murals for each area are specific scenes in the Yellowstone area. The campsite sits against a lodge pole pine forest. A child fishing in front of the mural of Yellowstone Lake catches cutthroat trout found along the shore. In addition to choosing views for scenic cues that inspire play and conversation, staff considered MOR’s strengths in realism and the information and stories embedded in each view to support staff facilitation.

The areas might seem sparse or incomplete if they did not work naturally together and were not layered with props. Connected play activities build on one another extending in many directions. A map orients visitors to Explore Yellowstone where they can pick up a backpack and head off to the Campsite, Fishing Bridge,  Lodge,  Geyser Basin,  Fire Tower, or Yellowstone Grand Canyon.

A child moves back-and-forth between the campsite and fishing bridge, catching a fish, measuring it, and cooking it. Another child catches a fish and feeds it to the eagle in the nest. In one encounter observed by staff, a boy was fishing on the bridge and was approached by a girl wearing a ranger’s vest. She asked him for his fishing license which he could not produce. She suggested they step over to the nearby fishing license station and fill out a license which they did.

Props that are relevant, plentiful, and at varying scales also support and extend play across several Yellowstone areas. A mother and son were setting up camp around the tent, arranging the mess kit, backpack stove, and food. Some of the same food was later being cooked atop the 1920's stove to serve guests at the Lodge.

Connected play experiences

In the Lodge, a 5-year old declares, “I don’t know when I’ll ever be done cooking,” as she removes a pan from the impressive stove. This is just one delightful snippet from her much longer dialogue about cooking and serving a meal for the crowd gathered around the table. This crowd included a three or four year old girl in a firefighter outfit eating a carrot, the chef, backpacker, and a real mom and dad.

Two areas, the Fire Tower and Magma have relatively few interactives and don’t receive comparable levels and types of interactions other areas do. Working with an education professor at Montana State University, Explore Yellowstone staff is looking at the goals of each area to show how children interact with one area compared to another. Remediation is the intended next step.

Getting Geysers Right

Every project has technical and content challenges to manage. Explore Yellowstone had several unusual ones that it navigated well. Designing a geyser presented several challenges.

The exhibit team’s first geyser challenge was to design and fabricate a feature that was not only identifiable as a geyser, but also worked without water because of MOR's collections. A second challenge was a convincing geyser that goes off several times a day without scaring toddlers. A third challenge was explaining geysers to toddlers since “super-heated” is not a concept familiar to toddlers or preschoolers. This last challenge was addressed through an exchange between lead interpreters at Yellowstone Park and Explore Yellowstone staff. Eventually all agreed that “boiling macaroni and cheese” to describe the boiling water under Yellowstone would work for both young children and geysers.

A quiet geyser from 10-noon

According to Angie Weikert, Education Director, Early and Elementary, meeting the first two challenges produced a lively design process. The geyser was designed to start with a low rumbling. A fan inflated a balloon-shaped geyser; the rumble continued in a low vibration. This was a very successful event with the geyser going off several times a day. The sounds of the geyser, however, were a bit too authentic for toddlers and preschoolers. Staff heard children scream and run out crying. After talking with parents, staff determined that the surprise, duration, and sound were scary. The Museum’s website now carries this message: "There are no geyser eruptions in the Center between the hours of 10-Noon daily. This is in consideration of visiting families with small children who may be sensitive to the noise.”

A new twist on Yellowstone wildlife

Yellowstone Park is a mountain wild land, home to grizzly bears, wolves, and herds of bison and elk. Because animals are well loved and engaging, Explore Yellowstone would also need to be home to animals. Exhibit planners made an interesting choice in deciding how to represent about a dozen animals, such as a swan, wildcat, and bison. Animals are fabricated from recycled objects. While this solution may sound strange particularly in a science and nature museum, it addresses a number of audience, experiential, and content considerations.

Children inevitably ask whether an animal is "real.” Answering whether a stuffed bear is real is tricky. When real objects are assembled to represent an animal, however, the answer is one a child can grasp: the animal is not real, but the objects–that guitar, brushes, and bowl–are. At the same time, the sculptures are able to accurately portray animals in size, positions, and settings. Finally, children want to touch animals. Allowing them to touch these artful assemblies of everyday objects avoids teaching them that they can approach live animals in the Park.

Explore Yellowstone works on many levels. Children are highly engaged in place-based explorations of the science and natural wonders of Yellowstone Park.  Parents and grandparents get into the act and extend children’s play. Conversations are long and lively. The layered immersive experiences, connected contexts, ample props, and scenic backdrops work together to support the kind of playful exploration museums, educators, parents, and children value.

As a place that values young families, Explore Yellowstone becomes a gateway experience to the Museum of the Rockies. By complementing the National Park Service in areas where it excels, MOR serves as a gateway experience to Yellowstone Park.