Thursday, January 31, 2013

Our Latest News

Lots of exciting things are happening at Providence Children’s Museum lately!
  • Museum director Janice O'Donnell has been selected as a 2013 Rhode Island Foundation Fellow by The Foundation's Initiative for Nonprofit Excellence. Fellows are leaders who are committed to their continuous development and receive support and funds for an 18-month period of personal and professional growth. Janice plans to use this opportunity for in-depth study of "playwork," a model for supporting children's self-directed play as practiced in the United Kingdom. She will spend time in London learning from master playworkers and use this experience to train staff at the Museum and elsewhere in playwork practices – and we can’t wait to learn from her!
  • The National Science Foundation has granted Brown University's Causality and Mind Lab $713,000 to collaborate with the Museum on a three-year project investigating ways children develop scientific thinking skills and parents’ understanding of their children's learning processes. In addition to informing academic research, the funding will enable the Museum to develop communication tools to increase visitors' awareness of the learning that occurs through children's play.
  • Families Together, the Museum's therapeutic visitation program for children in foster care, was recently included in the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth’s Nationwide Listening Tour, examining innovative child welfare practices. Congress members Karen Bass (CA) and Jim Langevin (RI) visited Nina’s House, a homelike setting where Museum clinicians help families rebuild relationships. Click here for a summary of the listening tour.  

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