Vamos Niños - Play to Learn Mobile Children’s Museum is hitting the road with a focus on serving rural and remote communities. The museum is set to make a lasting impact on childhood education throughout the region and our most rural communities.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Communications Coordinator Sommer Mitchell said. “The museum that we have now has exceeded all of our initial expectations.”
The mobile museum started rolling April 6 in Anthony and is launching in Las Cruces 4-7 p.m. Friday, April 19 at Young Park, 850 S. Walnut St. The museum is a product or Ngage New Mexico and the Success Partnership starting from a seed question: “How do we get resources to the families in the rural parts of Doña Ana County?”
Mitchell said Ngage New Mexico has several focuses in its broad mission to build capacity for non-profits and be a catalyst for change.
“Education needs to be thought of in a holistic point of view as far as the health of the family, including mental health, early child education and physical health,” she said. “Whatever is happening, children can’t learn in fight-or-flight mode. So, it was like we should do a museum and it has got to be accessible in to people in rural communities.”
Thus, the mobile children’s museum emerged and there is a resource center inside of it, she said. The idea is to take a caravan of services to locations where families can engage with their children in meaningful ways as well as gain access to the early childhood development.
Michelle Simon, part of the museum team, said the museum includes indoor and outdoor exhibits such as a bubble table, giant blocks for building structures, a video microscope and much more.
“It’s a place for parents to engage with their children,” she said. “No parents on cell phones.”
The exhibits are designed for 3- to 5-year-olds, ”but really we saw kids in there under a year enjoying the sensory things and 8-year-olds were having a blast,” Simon said.
When the museum travels on its regular stops across the county, including Hatch and Anthony, it is a free resource for the community, she said. If there is a special visit, maybe to a school or daycare facility, there will be a fee to cover the expenses of travel and time.
More information is available at VamosNinos.org and its social media channels: facebook.com/VamosNinosNM and Instagram.com/VamosNinos).
