NORMAL — Just in time for the holidays, the Children’s Discovery Museum will open the first phase of a new exhibit called “You’ve Got the Power” the week of Thanksgiving.

“You’ve Got the Power” will open on the second floor of the museum, where the “Oh Rubbish” exhibit is currently located.

“The ‘Oh Rubbish’ exhibit — parts of it haven’t worked as well as maybe they could,” said Children’s Discovery Museum Manager Sheila Riley. “There’s an area meant to be like a landfill area. It’s a little difficult to interpret and that’s part of the reason it’s not working as well as it should. It’s on the left side of the exhibit space. We’re going to be actually taking some of that out.”
To bridge the gap between closing one exhibit and opening a new one, the museum will have a traveling exhibit called “Nano” in mid-September. The interactive exhibit explores nanoscale science — the strange world of the very, very small.
The “Nano” exhibit will open September 11, following the museum’s annual shutdown September 3-10 for maintenance. It will be located on the future site of the “You’ve Got the Power” exhibit.
The first phase of the “You’ve Got the Power” exhibit includes an activity called “Energy Challenge” that allows children to interact with different types of energy, including wind energy, coal, natural gas, solar energy, and oil. The standalone feature will allow kids to compare renewable resources, such as wind, and “not as renewable”’ resources, such as coal, in a variety of ways.
“They’ll have the opportunity to work together at the activity to actually power the Bloomington-Normal area,” said Riley. “There are going to be some buildings that are on the activity that are actually designated as landmarks in this area. The kids are going to work together and — depending the type of energy — they’re going to be able to power certain buildings or not, depending on how they work together. If they have all their energy working together, they can light it (the buildings) up.”
The “Energy Challenge” standalone will cost the museum around $175,000. An Illinois Department of Natural Resources grant will cover two-thirds of the cost, and the museum received $20,000 from Commerce Bank and $10,000 from an Indiana donor-advised fund.
“You’ve Got the Power” is the next step in the museum’s five-year comprehensive plan.
“We’ve got plans for a couple of new exhibits down the road, but we’re in the process of waiting for a grant (before we start them),” said Riley. “We should know in a couple of months (if we got the grant).”
The next exhibit planned for the museum is the “My Great Backyard” exhibit that will be located on the first floor in the toddler section.
“We have an area in the toddler section of the first floor,” said Riley. “We’re planning on doing that area with a backyard theme. At this point it’s called ‘My Great Backyard.’ It’s meant for little ones, so it’s going to be an environment of things they might have in their backyard. They’ve had some working designs, but I have not really studied that enough to where I could talk about it.”
According to Riley, “My Great Backyard” will probably open in a couple of years.