Pretend City The Childrens Museum Of Orange County
PROGRAMS
Scholarship Field Trips
Pretend City Children’s Museum has committed resources to assure that children and families from underserved areas or those who are being served by non-profit partners can access the programming of the museum. All field trips to the Museum are subsidized between 60% and 100%. The field trips include programs on financial literacy, community partners, and environmental stewardship.
Following the field trip, students will understand the importance of communities working together and community helpers. Students learn to work together collaboratively, understand the importance of community and belonging as well as support one another in mutual and individual efforts. Teachers are given post-visit curriculum to support common core standards and continue lessons of interdependence.
On previous surveys, most teachers “strongly agree” that learning about healthy eating in an immersive play environment themed as a real city has a greater impact than simply reading about or discussing the subject.
Good to Go
The Pretend City “Good to Go” initiative is designed to help families identify developmental delays as early as possible and help ready their children for school. The program educates service providers and families with young children about the importance of developmental screenings. The Good to Go from Head to Toe! (G2G) initiative combines on‐site screenings, parent and provider education and training, and connecting caregivers to the right resources to increase the overall number of Orange County children who receive developmental screenings. The G2G Ages and Stages Program is a parent-completed developmental screenings used to ensure that the child’s growth and development is progressing on track. It has been used for more than 20 years to make sure children are developing properly. It looks at the child’s strengths and challenges, educates about developmental milestones, and incorporates the parents' expert knowledge about their child to learn more about their development. It assesses five major development areas: communication, gross motor, fine motor, problem solving, and personal social skills. It is valid, reliable and recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The Good to Go from Head to Toe Initiative has partnered with many new organizations over the past two years providing free health screenings to children not only in Orange County, but for all of our annual visitors. These screenings include dental, vision, speech, and developmental. If needed, families are referred to the Regional Center of Orange County and/or Help Me Grow for additional resoruces. In 2023, 1,310 total screenings were provided through the Good to Go Program.
Developing and Discovery Diversity Program
The Developing and Discovery Diversity Program at Pretend City highlights a variety of cultures, families and lifestyles that are represented in our community. At the Café exhibit, families have the opportunity to role-play in a child-size play restaurant with a variety of pretend foods from the designated cultural background, such as Greek, Japanese, Mexican, and Persian foods. This play encourages parents and caregivers to begin conversations about cultures and to evoke the idea of the diversity represented in the décor and foods in the Café. Pretend City’s educational staff facilitates learning activities by introducing different aspects of that diverse culture, such as new vocabulary, foods, meals, and decor. The Café exhibit changes once per year in order to reflect various cultures. The Our Home Exhibit is expressly designed to highlight diversity, by reflecting the real home and lives of a local family. Because Orange County, CA is an area extraordinarily rich in cultural diversity the exhibit provides an ever-changing and broad array of the many interesting cultures that make up our immediate community. The effectiveness of this exhibit lays in the fact that we are highlighting a real family. The artwork hung around the home, clothing in the bedrooms, food in the kitchen’s refrigerator, toys, religious and cultural objects are all representative of the featured family’s culture and lifestyle. Displayed in the home is a television where a custom video recording of the featured family serves to explain their home life, traditions, and favorite activities. Through pretend play in the exhibit, children experiment with adult roles, explore interesting aspects of other peoples’ lives, and recognize the ways that their community members and peers are alike and different. All components of the diversity curriculum are designed to engage all family members in interactive learning.
Through surveys and observation, Pretend City will seek to quantify whether Pretend City will meet the goal of teaching a child of a young age to appreciate diversity after experiencing play activity programming in these exhibits. The outcomes sought will include whether or not small children can interact in a culturally appropriate way, use appropriate language to express new ideas, and solve problems. The success of the program will be measured through audience engagement and partnership collaboration. Audience engagement will be measured through surveys and observation. Pretend City will seek to quantify whether a young child can appreciate diversity after experiencing play activity programming in these exhibits. The outcomes sought will include whether young children can 1) identify cultural likenesses and differences, 2) use appropriate language to express new ideas about cultures and celebrations, and 3) to participate in discussions about cultural likenesses and differences . Weekly surveys will be utilized to measure impact among our Pretend City members, who are the most frequent visitors and thus will provide the most accurate measure of impact over time. The Education Committee will oversee the results and work with our education staff to determine any changes to the program. Partnership collaboration will be measured by identifying and engaging with new partners to the museum and maintaining their ongoing relationship with the museum. This allows the organization to build new audiences through these collaborations and hopefully reaching an untapped market. The exhibit change-overs give the Museum an opportunity to explain about different cultures through play.
Welcome Families and Museums for All
Welcome Families provides more than 12,000 free admissions annually for our most vulnerable Orange County citizens. Passes are distributed to partnering social service agencies who in turn distribute the passes to qualified, low-income and at-risk children and families. The program is designed to ensure that all children in Orange County have the opportunity to experience Pretend City’s rich learning environment. Access for All provides $3 admission for anyone with an EBT card (public assistance benefits). The program has no limitations and provides access to programs that encourage families of all backgrounds to visit museums regularly and build lifelong museum habits. This program successfully broadens our visitor base and outreach in underserved communities by raising public awareness about how museums serve entire communities.
Children’s museums are leading a movement to combine specific learning objectives with play in informal learning environments that are developmentally appropriate for infants, toddlers and children across all demographics. Pass redemption, letters from recipients, and agency feedback are some of the measures of success for Welcome Families and Access for All. By removing the financial barrier, Access for All also removes the social and academic barriers families may face when they are not exposed to high quality museum experiences.
CONTACT
Pretend City The Childrens Museum Of Orange County
29 Hubble
Irvine, CA 92618
Phone: 949-428-3900 #240