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Outreach Programs
In today’s culture, childhood is compressed. Families have less time to spend with one another. Individuals, neighbors, and communities are detached. Those with different physical and mental abilities, as well as those new to a community, are asked to either assimilate or remain separate. Resources that educate, care for, and promote communities are stretched thin by demands to do more with less. In this environment, children’s museums stand out as unique places that bring children, families, and communities together for quality learning.
In pursuit of its primary mission to bring innovative learning opportunities to children in the greatest need, CMOM partners with a wide variety of Community Based Organizations as well as City, State and National Government agencies, foundations, corporations and educational institutions to provide programs to over 400,000 children each year. These partnerships and the resulting programs have positioned CMOM as a leader in outreach efforts throughout the city, across the country and around the world.
To learn more about CMOM’s outreach efforts click below:
School Programs and Partnerships
Shelter and Temporary Housing Programs
Partnerships with Hospital and Medical Centers
After-School and Out-of-School Time Programs
Membership Program for Low Income Families
High School Internship Programs
College and Graduate School Internships
On-Going Research in the Field of Education
School Programs and Partnerships
CMOM works with the Department of Education as well as private and parochial schools to provide important educational opportunities for New York City children in all five boroughs. Programs are designed to meet performance standards in the arts, literacy and sciences through an inquiry based process that engages children to develop critical thinking skills.
30,000 school children visit CMOM a year to participate in guided exhibition tours and hands-on interactive workshops. CMOM also partners with schools to provide in-depth programming including: The New York City Museum School (NYCMS) located in Manhattan’s Chelsea Neighborhood. As a “New Vision” public high school NYCMS integrates museum study into academic excellence by engaging students through object-based learning, encouraging students to develop visual literacy, interpretive skills and critical thinking; PS 64 and New Settlement Apartments in the Bronx to providing a combination of services including in-school literacy programs, after-school cultural and professional development; PS 87 in the Upper West Side in a variety of capacities including providing after-school programming, hosting the annual project reads. CMOM works with the New York City Department of Education to provide professional development sessions for early childhood, art, science and new teachers as well as parent coordinators and after-school staff.
Program descriptions of Guided Exhibition Tours
Program descriptions of In-School Outreach Classes and Programs
Program descriptions of Professional Development
More information about The New York City Museum School
Shelter and Temporary Housing Programs
Children make up a large proportion of the number of homeless in the United States. In New York City there are a number of experimental models for temporary housing including private and public complexes where part of the apartments are reserved for the homeless. CMOM works with a number of sites to provide programs that help to build personal and professional skills as well as science, art and literacy enrichment programs.
The Homes for the Homeless program provides children and families living in temporary housing with 20 weeks of music, art, literacy, and parenting skills development in a safe and supportive environment. Participants engage in an early childhood curriculum designed to integrate museum exploration with literacy skills. Work with CMOM educators and a licensed social worker help participants develop parenting strategies and gain insight into how their children learn. Journal writing sessions with a resident author promote personal dignity and expression. Each year these writing exercises are turned into a published literary magazine.
Working throughout Harlem, Broadway Housing Communities addresses homelessness by promoting stability and dignity through the provision of permanent housing. Broadway Housing also seeks to address some of the health issues affecting Harlem. To that end CMOM developed and taught a fun, hands-on series of activities that taught human biology as well as important health information about what diabetes is, how it impacts the body and what students can do to help prevent the onset of diabetes, within themselves and their community.
Located in the Bronx, New Settlement comprises 14 formerly abandoned buildings in Morris Heights. New Settlement integrates working-class residents with the formerly homeless as an essential means to revitalizing poor neighborhoods and pulling the homeless out of a cycle of poverty. As the success of the organization has grown so too has its mission to provide not just housing but badly needed social services including after-school programs. CMOM has worked with New Settlement and school administrators for the last five years to develop programming at three sites in the South Bronx: PS 64, CES 88, and New Settlement Community Center.
More Information about The Homes for the Homeless Outreach Program
The complications of being sick, the medical procedures a patient undergoes, being taken out of school and even just being in a hospital are all disruptions to a child’s social life. Patients are eager to have “normal” experiences and this is an important goal for these programs.
The Memorial Sloan Kettering Arts Outreach Program helps children living with Cancer and their families explore, heal and learn through art. For two hours every week, the Museum sends its leading educators to the children’s ward of Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Cancer Treatment Center. Equipped with a portable selection of supplies and a creative curriculum, the educators invite patients, their siblings and parents to participate in free, innovative art activities that are therapeutic, fun and educational. By combining an academic focus with fun art activities, the art-making program makes the hospital setting more livable, stimulating, and fun for kids coping with illness.
The Children’s Hospital at Montefiore The Carl Sagan Discovery Program at CHAM is the nation's first science and learning program fully integrated into the design and philosophy of a pediatric hospital. Activities are designed to develop patients’ understanding of themselves within the context of the world and the universe. CMOM has partnered with CHAM to design curriculum and train the program’s high school and college age Science Explainers to teach younger patients. After initial training sessions, CMOM works weekly with both the explainers and patients to model hands-on science activities.
In a new partnership with New York Presbyterian CMOM is working to promote healthy living through a series of hands-on workshops, guest speakers and special events.
Libraries are more than sources of information they serve as community centers acting as neighborhood resources and providing a wide variety of programming for all ages and in all subjects.
CMOM provides the New York Public Libraries with educational experiences to over 6,000 participants at branches throughout Manhattan and in the Bronx. These programs are primarily science and art based designed for elementary age students as well as parent child classes for 3-4 year olds.
The Queens Library System has the largest book circulation of any system in the country and serves the most ethnically diverse county in the country. CMOM provides hands-on science programs at a number of branches throughout the Borough.
For a list of library branches that CMOM has provided programs at click here
Over the last decade After-School and Out- o- School Time Programs have experienced a Renaissance. The number offered, the geographic reach, the variety of subjects and the professional standards have increased, expanded and improved. Many After-school efforts have worked to address the struggling academic performance of students at school. They also provide safe environments for students to test out new ideas in a supportive environment in which learning can flourish.
CMOM works with City Agencies, Community Based Organizations and Schools across the city to provide enrichment programs in the after-school hours and Out of School Time. Using expertise and experience garnered through school partnerships to develop curriculum and provide professional development CMOM has developed an approach that compliments and enriches the work of schools to meets performance standards in science, art and literacy. CMOM also emphasizes critical thinking and problem solving skills through hands-on workshops providing students with opportunities to learn about, test out, experiment with and apply their ideas without fear of failure building self confidence and an intimate understanding of content, access to education specialists, practicing artists, writers and science students. CMOM currently provides weekly after-school programming at Mosholu Community Center, New Settlement Community Center, PS 64 and CES 88 in the Bronx, PS 87, PS 75 and Broadway Housing in Manhattan, PS 58 in Brooklyn and The Hellenic American Neighborhood Action Committee in Queens.
Membership Program for Low Income Families
Families in underserved communities are often shy about visiting the many cultural institutions of New York City. Costly fees, unfamiliar content, language barriers and a variety of other intimidating circumstances create an imaginary wall preventing access. To begin to address these issues CMOM has developed the Community Access Membership Program designed to invite title one or low income families to the museum and encourage their continued utilization of the museum’s many resources.
Since 2000, the Community Access Program has enabled low-income families to purchase CMOM family memberships for $5 (reduced from $210), giving them unlimited access to the Museum. CMOM partners with more than 50 community-based organizations (Community Access Friends) to promote this program. In three years the Access program has hosted over 20 private open-house events where it has welcomed more than 4,000 new visitors and sold more than 1,000 Access memberships. Of this number, nearly half have chosen to renew their Access memberships.
Learn more about CMOM’s ACCESS Membership Program
A large portion of the Bronx comprises the county with the lowest household income in the United States but income is only one indicator of the many struggles of a neighborhood underserved in a city rich with resources. These inequalities are the bases for CMOM’s Bronx Initiative begun by Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion who approached CMOM to pilot early childhood programming and then build these programs into a children’s museum in the Bronx.
CMOM is currently in the pilot phase working at two sites: Winifred Wheeler Day Care Center (in Mott Haven) and at Mosholu Montefiore Community Center in the North Bronx. Programming includes weekly literacy and arts-focused workshops for children at each of the three sites and is complemented by a borough-wide “Family Festival” at Hostos Community College on November 4, 2006. The Family Festival will allow a greater number of families to participate and also provide the opportunity to market the neighborhood programming to a broad audience.
More information about the Bronx Initiative
Ongoing Research in the Field of Education
Sharing the enormous body of experience, expertise and enthusiasm for education is an important part of CMOM’s mission. Through research, mentorship, model projects and more CMOM works to further the field.
CMOM works with the New York City Department of Education as well as universities and colleges in New York City and across the country to do research, provide internships and professional development. CMOM is also a member of, and regularly hosts meetings and conferences for, the Association of Children’s Museums, New York City Access Consortium, the New York City Museum Educators Round Table, New York Museums Council, The Career Internship Network, The Society for Arts in Healthcare, The American Association of Museums and The Partnership for After-School Education.
CMOM has
also recently installed a state of the art research lab. Funded by a Federal
Department of Education Ready to Learn Grant, the Research Lab enables
researchers to study children utilizing new media platforms and provides
opportunities to study museum learning.
CMOM partners with organizations and museums across the country in a variety of efforts including the development of touring exhibitions and programming in areas of great need.
Play Helps… a National Play & Learning Initiative
CMOM with the support of the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM), has been selected by the Toy Industry Foundation (TIF) to launch a 3-5 year program called Play Helps… a National Play & Learning Initiative that will focus public attention on the importance of play as the foundation for learning. Because play is a universal right of all children, Play Helps will eliminate economic barriers to provide learning opportunities for young children, especially those from low-income communities.
Monkey King: Journey to China Touring Exhibition
This 1,500 square foot exhibition is one of seven exhibitions that comprise the Asian Exhibit Initiative, funded by the Freeman Foundation and administered by the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM). It opened at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan (CMOM) in January 2004, the Year of the Monkey, and the following July began a tour to 10 children’s museums across the country.
Oh, Seuss! Off to Great Places Touring Exhibition
This hands-on interactive exhibition which makes Dr. Seuss well-loved books come to life, features the colorful, unconventional characters and wacky environments of Dr. Seuss. Letters, words, and rhymes appear throughout the environment in unexpected places – encouraging children to read, interact, and to use language in playful and unusual ways. Each of the gallery’s 20 activities is set in an environment reflecting scenes from one of five featured books: Oh, The Places You’ll Go!, Green Eggs and Ham, Horton Hatches An Egg, If I Ran the Circus and Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?
Learn more about Play Helps… a National Play & Learning Initiative
Learn more about Seuss: Off to Great Places Touring Exhibition
Learn more about Monkey King: Journey to China Touring Exhibition
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