PUTTING THE FUN BACK IN LEARNING AT THE CHILDREN’S MUSEUM OF SONOMA COUNTY BY CHRIS VOMVOLAKIS
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INCE OPENING ITS DOORS
in 2012, the Children’s Museum of Sonoma County (CMOSC) has become Santa Rosa’s premier destination for learning through direct experience play, welcoming over 150,000 parents, caregivers, educators and families each year. Through their interactive exhibits and engaging educational programs, CMOSC has been dedicated to inspiring young minds to learn about the world around them, stimulate creativity and curiosity, and to discover the world through playful exploration of the arts
and sciences. CMOSC is a place where children can do the serious work of learning through play. A person who holds a place in many of our childhood and parenting memories, Fred Rogers said, “Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.” CEO and Founder Collette Michaud agrees and emphasizes that CMOSC is the perfect place for children to learn through play. She is a huge believer in out-of-school experiences that involve play and their ability to shape us—that we all have the inherent and biological need to play to be fulfilled and happy. Under Michaud’s leadership CMOSC is brimming with one-of-a-kind educational experiences that are truly unlike any other. From painting with shaving cream and jamming on a drum set made of recyclable materials to playing inside a real helicopter, CMOSC promises that
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kiddos will leave with tons of memories and a little extra knowledge. Her proudest moment was when CMOSC secured a 1.8 million dollar grant from the State of California to build an outdoor nature space on an acre of land at the Children’s Museum. The grant gave them the confidence to move forward on construction even though CMOSC was not a fully operating museum at the time. Michaud proudly recounts creating “Mary’s Garden” way ahead of schedule, and in 2016, it was named “Best place in the world for children that is not a playground” by Landscape Architecture online. To local and visiting families alike this outdoor play area is the big draw. An expansive playground with a butterfly theme (“Mary” is short for mariposa, the Spanish word for butterfly), roughly half of the area revolves around a replica of the Russian River, a self-filtering water feature that trickles into a pond with living plants and flowers.
