JANUARY 22, 2009 ISSUE
Business Spotlight
The Children’s Playhouse—An Imagination Station and Safe Haven for High Country Children and Adults
Kathy Parham serves as executive director of The Children’s Playhouse, a children’s museum established in November 2002 after a group of parents identified the need for such a facility in the High Country. Now, almost seven years later, The Children’s Playhouse provides a safe haven for children and adults away from the normal confines of the outside world. At the museum, children are free to play how they desire and parents can network and gain perspective on some of the rougher points of parenthood. Photo by Sam Calhoun
Up on Tracy Circle in Boone, there’s a place that’s free from judgment or stereotypes, a place where a child’s imagination is allowed to run wild and a place where parents feel just as home as the children do.
Welcome to The Children’s Playhouse, an independent nonprofit children’s museum that serves as an indoor playground for local children’s minds and bodies.
Children’s museums have been around for about 100 years, according to The Children’s Playhouse Executive Director Kathy Parham, but have become popular in the last decade. Today, more than 350 children’s museums exist worldwide.
“A children’s museum is where you learn by doing,” explained Parham. “They provide a safe space for imaginative play.”
The Children’s Playhouse, located at 400 Tracy Circle in Boone, boasts 200 member families that, coupled with the large amount of pay-as-you-go clientele, account for between 7,000 and 8,000 visits to the museum annually. In addition to Parham, Volunteer Coordinator and Visitor Services Manager Meghann Ainsworth, two student employees and multiple ASU interns staff the museum.
Most important, The Children’s Playhouse is a safe place for children to play and for parents to learn, connect and relax with other parents in similar situations. Unlike a daycare, parents do not drop their children off at the museum; rather, families enjoy the experience together—mothers and children, fathers and children, mothers and fathers and children or grandparents and children.
“This is a place to be inside and spend time between children and parents. The stations in here teach language development, life skills and promote the understanding of health and sickness,” said Parham.
The Children’s Playhouse is split into six parts—an office space, an art room, a reading room, a room designed to look like a house that has a loft, a block room and a Romp and Stomp room. Activities include arts and crafts, music and drama, science experiments, sand and water play, reading and playing with trains. The art room is the largest and is filled with painting stations, puppet-making stations, a station where children can use plastic hammers to bang golf tees into blue board and a station where children can design whatever their imagination conceives with wooden blocks. Pictures of different children’s block creations line the walls of the room, hung beside other children’s works of art.
Last Monday, January 19, 24 ASU students took the nationwide Martin Luther King, Jr. Challenge and donated their time and energy into redoing all the rooms at The Children’s Playhouse. Now, The Children’s Playhouse has a room set up to look like a veterinary office, complete with an exam table, x-ray, kennels and dog grooming station; a room set up to resemble a house with a kitchen; a room called the Meadow Room that contains books, toys, leaves on the wall and a soon-to-be-completed rug with a nature scene; and a new and improved Romp and Stomp room. The Romp and Stomp room is a multipurpose space that is used for creative movement classes for kids and includes a 5-foot tall climbing wall that features obstacles that children must overcome to traverse from one side to the other. When the climbing wall is not in use, it can be folded up against the wall and space can be made available for activities. The Romp and Stomp room also includes a Matisse-inspired mural.
“But this place is as much for parents as it is for kids,” said Parham. “Our mission is to not only offer play space for kids, but also to offer support for parents.”
Lining the walls of two of the rooms in The Children’s Playhouse are parenting books that parents can check out and take home. Starting next month, the museum is hosting a 5-week parenting class called Parenting With Love and Logic. The class takes place on Tuesday evenings and costs $15 per parent. The price includes babysitting during the classes.
But beyond books and classes, parents interact with each other while their children play at The Children’s Playhouse, providing much-needed support to each other through advice and troubleshooting. Sometimes, parents just need another parent to listen to their problems; sometimes, parents need advice on how to handle their child at a certain age; sometimes, parents want to be around other parents that know what they are going through; and sometimes, parents want to enjoy spending time with their children around other people and not feel guilty if their kids are loud, unruly or playing in their own unique way. The Children’s Playhouse provides a safe haven for all of this activity, making parents feel comfortable and unembarrassed, and kids feel imaginative, interactive and free from the confines of the outside world.
Admission to The Children’s Playhouse is $5 per person per day, but annual memberships are available. For $100 per year, a whole family—any number of parents and children—can have an unlimited membership to The Children’s Playhouse. For $125, a whole family can get a Passport Membership that, in addition to an unlimited membership at The Children’s Playhouse, provides free entry to any one of the hundreds of children’s museums in the country throughout the year. To purchase a membership, stop by The Children’s Playhouse, call 828-263-0011 or click to www.goplayhouse.org.
“It’s very important to the keep the Playhouse accessible, so we also offer scholarship memberships,” said Parham.
Roughly 25 percent of the families with annual memberships to the museum take advantage of scholarship memberships. Scholarship memberships are either free or half-price, based on a family’s income in relation to the national poverty line. High Country United Way supplements offset the admission price of the scholarship memberships. The scholarship membership application, said Parham, is simple to fill out and should not seem out of reach for local, low-income families. “And once a family gets a scholarship membership, we treat them just like anyone else—no one ever knows,” she added.
The idea for The Children’s Playhouse came about seven years ago. At the time, Parham had a 5-year-old and a 1-year-old, and she heard about a gathering of parents at a local coffee shop to talk about the creation of a children’s museum.
During the meeting, the group identified the project’s largest stumbling point—the cost of real estate. Parham told the group that she knew of a building in Boone that used to be a daycare, and if they were willing to help clean it up and remodel it, they could probably move in. From May 2002 to November 2002, Parham and the group of parents repainted the walls of the space, refinished the floors, repaired the walls and cleaned the space. In November 2002, The Children’s Playhouse opened—the business had only $1,000 in the bank.
For the first few years, the Watauga County Arts Council served as the fiscal agent for The Children’s Playhouse, but soon the museum was solid enough to go it alone. Soon after, the museum received a $30,000 National Endowment of the Arts Early Learning in the Arts Grant that was used to create special programming in the museum and at local schools.
The Children’s Playhouse is home to classes and events for children and parents. Some are free, such as storytelling on the second Wednesday of every month, and Allison Moser’s Music Garden class that is an early childhood music program and takes place once a month. Some cost small fees, such as the creative movement for kids class in the spring and the preschool tumbling class in the winter. Twice per year, The Children’s Playhouse hosts a consignment and rubbage sale at the Boone National Guard Armory. On Saturday, August 8, the museum hosts its 3rd annual Playhouse Family Music Festival in Boone. Last year’s festival boasted 1,000 attendees.
On Friday, January 23, nominations are due for The Children’s Playhouse Great Friend to Families Award. The Children’s Playhouse is asking that community members nominate their favorite teacher, doctor, social worker, principal, volunteer, coach, PTA president, childcare provider, donor, tutor or other community member that they think makes the High Country a better place for families. The winner receives $500 to donate to the local charity of his/her choice. To nominate someone you know, fill out a nomination form by clicking to www.goplayhouse.org.
The Children’s Playhouse is located at 400 Tracy Circle in Boone. The independent nonprofit children’s museum is open 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, and from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Saturday. For more information, call 828-263-0011 or click to www.goplayhouse.org.
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