This Spring we also finally started a couple of partnerships we were looking at since last year. The program is called BAMM @ the Museum and it is a great way for us to extend our programming to other cities in Ohio. Museums are great hubs for interactive learning and they often offer workshops and other programming beyond their permanent exhibits.

In February and March, we visited for the first time two of our state’s great museums: AHA! A Hands-On Adventure, A Children’s Museum, in Lancaster, and The Works, Ohio Center for History, Art and Technology, in Newark.

AHA! is a very special museum for toddlers. There we set a station for three hours, during which a few toddlers stopped to play and experiment with materials such building tiles, rep-tiles puzzles, and Frogs and Toads. One 6-year old girl was very commited in trying all our activities and upon solving a puzzle looked at us like asking “What’s next?”

We crashed The Works on a slow rainy day but enjoyed hosting their Curious Kids program. Curious Kids is a weekly workshop for 2- to 6-year olds that lasts 30 minutes. Bart Snapp led a workshop on tilings and symmetries. The tables were fulled with wood tiles with different equilateral shapes and kids were asked to put them together creating patterns. He showed some examples with different types of symmetries and the little ones, with some help from their parents, were able to come up with examples of their own.

We promised to come back for Curious Kids every month. We will also join another one of their programs: Girls Night In, for teenage girls and their mothers.

We hope to find other museums in cities around Columbus, so that we can extend our math programming to all Ohio.