Children's Museum of Houston - Week 1

As I write this, it is 1:40 pm on Friday, July 13th, and I’m about to officially finish the first week of
my internship at The Children’s Museum of Houston. I’m working in the Education Department
of the museum, and my supervisor Alleigh is one of the two science educators. She is in charge of
two huge exhibits in the museum: PowerPlay and EcoStation. The main purpose of PowerPlay is to
teach kids all about how their bodies work, and the importance of movement and exercise. EcoStation
however is all about environmental science, focusing on things that our little visitors can find in their
own backyard!


The sign for the PowerPlay exhibit
Monday: On my first day, Alleigh gave me a quick tour of the whole museum, and then showed me
around our exhibits. One of the components of PowerPlay is the Power Science Lab, where our little
visitors become real scientists and complete experiments that relate to the human body. Alleigh
writes all of these experiments herself; designing them, creating a matching powerpoint with
background information and instructions, and finally putting them out on the floor for the visitors to enjoy.
She explained that one of the biggest goals she had for me was to write my own programs
(or experiments) that could be put out as activities in the exhibits in the fall, so of course I jumped right
into it! I spent the morning brainstorming, thinking about any sort of experiment I had done in a
science class in high school. I settled on a lab I remembered from my AP Psychology class which
was all about reaction time and reflexes.


Tuesday: On Tuesday, I continued working on developing the lab, which I affectionately named
“This Lab RULES” which is a pun on the lab itself since the only material required is a wooden ruler!
After getting Alleigh’s approval, I started designing the powerpoint to go along with it. The powerpoint is
projected onto a computer screen on the lab table, and the kids click through the powerpoint to
complete the experiment, so it has to be very detail oriented. I finished it off with some exciting
animations and GIFs and I had finished the powerpoint!
Wednesday: On Wednesday I started cataloguing all of the old activities in the file archives in order to create a
master list. This was a multi-day project though, so to take a break I made some quick edits to the
powerpoint and lab script that I had written, since another educator had looked over it for me and made
some comments.


Thursday: On Thursday, Alleigh trained me on how to work on the museum floor in both the Power Science Lab
and EcoStation. For most of the day I switched between those two exhibits, either helping the little
scientists with their experiment or showing school groups the baby chicks that were hatching in the
EcoStation incubator!


Hatching chicks
Friday: Today I once again spent most of my time on the floor, but this time because I was trying out my very
own lab! We had several families try it, and I took notes on what worked or didn’t, and if anything
needed to be tweaked. It was super rewarding to see something that I worked super hard on making
others smile.
Working in Power Science Lab!

Despite not being a science major, I’ve fallen in love with working in the science department and watching kids get excited about all things STEM. Overall it was a SUPER week and I can’t wait to see what next week has in store!


At the Children's Museum, everyone is a superhero!












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