COVID-19 has closed indoor exploration spaces at some of South Dakota’s family-friendly learning destinations, like the Children’s Museum of South Dakota in Brookings and South Dakota Discovery Center in Pierre. However, these child-centric institutions have found innovative ways to provide creative and fun learning opportunities to children and families.
Children museum exhibits are all about interaction – they are designed to be touched, tried on, climbed on and splashed in. More than 100,000 children and their caregivers visited the Children’s Museum of South Dakota in Brookings annually before Covid. Now staff has to figure out a way to provide science, technology, engineering, art and math or STEAM educational experiences to families and educators through their Outdoor Prairie space and online classes. Kerrie Vilhauer is the Director of Marketing for the Children’s Museum of South Dakota.
“We are very intentional with our processes. And it is our top priority to keep health and safety of our community and staff. It’s not lip service. It’s really what we do and what we are about,” says Vilhauer.
When the museum closed its doors in March, museum staff applied the same innovation and creativity that typically went into in-door exhibits and developed age-appropriate Play Along At Home Kits which provide easy-to-follow directions and all the necessary materials for kids to engage in projects focused on art, nature or science and engineering. They also collaborated with the Brookings School District and facilitated Virtual STEAM challenges and expanded the Recipes for Play offerings on their blog.
“The hope would be that we can still spark some of that imagination, which is part of our mission, out into the world. While they can’t be in our museum, we can at least bring a little bit of the museum to them,” says Vilhauer.
“This crisis has forced a lot of creativity and innovation,” says Laura Huerta Migus.
Laura Huerta Migus is the Executive Director of the Association of Children’s Museums – an international organization representing more than 300 children’s museums.
From the start of the pandemic, the organization has worked to connect its members with information on the best science-based safety protocols and practices.
“Most children’s museums decided to close their doors to physical visits earlier than what was perhaps legally mandated by their local jurisdictions. …Because safety really is one of the critical parts of being child-centered space, the leadership of our member institutions decide very swiftly that closure was going to be in the best interest of the community health overall. And that was a decision worth making,” says Huerta Migus.
Although closing indoor spaces was done in the best interest of public health, it has not been good for budgets.
“This moment, I won’t lie. The pandemic has been catastrophic from a financial perspective on children’s museums,” says Huerta Migus.
Laura Huerta Migus explains, admission fees make up about 30 to 40 percent of most children’s museums annual budgets. She adds the spring shutdown also forced many museums to cancel annual fundraisers.
Kerrie Vilhauer says in response to a decrease in operating hours and revenue, the museum had to cut back on staff. The museum is able to remain open thanks to support from the Larson Family, community donors, grant dollars and revenue generated through the museum gift shop and Café Coteau which prepares meals to go with curbside pickup.
Rhea Waldman says South Dakota Discovery Center in Pierre has also had to get creative to remain open. The Executive Director says admissions profits are down 80 percent from 2019. But thanks to the success of a virtual fundraiser and because the City of Pierre covers facility costs, the Discovery Center is able to remain fully staffed to continue serving children in some of South Dakota’s most underserved communities.
“Schools are still, even if they are open, we can’t visit them and they usually have a ban on doing field trips. All of what we usually do in the fall, which is welcoming groups into the exhibit hall and going out and doing outreach in schools, all of that is not happening anymore. And so we really concentrated on the people that need us the most at the moment,” says Waldman.
Since Tribal schools went remote this spring and remain remote, Discovery Center staff have worked closely with elementary teachers on the Cheyenne River and Rosebud Reservations to provide students with online classes and culturally relevant hands-on STEM learning packets.