The discovery room has two floors. The lower floor is for 5+ year old visitors and the upper floor is for 8+ year old visitors. The youngest kid we met at the lower level was 23 months. Most of them speak English and some of them speak Spanish.
According to the museum staff, lots of children come back to visit for several times. Some visitors even know this room more than the staff. The staff also says it seems like some visitors even “grow up” in this discovery room.
The items in the discovery room are arranged by a leader working for the AMNH. There are three workers who keep maintaining the room. Once children finish playing with some items, workers will put them back to the right places.
The museum will organize lectures regularly and all are curriculum-based. While the setting of the discovery room is not based on any curriculum. It provides an informal learning environment and children can engage in many hands-on activities.
Ground Floor
The ground floor of the discovery room is divided into three areas: Biodiversity, Anthropology, and Paleontology areas. The observations are as follows:
Second Floor
On the second floor, we find a website on a computer: https://www.amnh.org/explore/ology. It contains lots of nature-related resources. A staff member says, among the sections on the website, she thinks “climate change” is an incoming popular topic in the future. Because the climate is changing fast right now, the biodiversity, earth, zoology, and more information (the
sections of the website) are also updating fast. The games related to climate change can inspire children to come up with solutions in order to protect our earth.
