Boston Children’s Museum’s New KEVA Plank Exhibit Fosters Creativity, Problem Solving, and Design and Building Skills
Boston, MA (PRWEB) June 27, 2015 -- Boston Children’s Museum’s new exhibit, KEVA: Design, Build, Create, allows children to envision and construct their own structures. KEVA planks are thin wooden pieces, approximately 1/4 inch thick, 3/4 inch wide and 4 1/2 inches long. Every piece is the same. There is no glue, tape, or connectors; no instruction manual and no directions. Structures are built simply by stacking the planks. The only limit is the imagination of the builder.
KEVA Planks introduce children to problem solving and abstract thinking, and foundational concepts of mathematics, physics, and design. Young children develop coordination, spatial awareness, and fine motor skills when they reach, pick up, stack, or fit blocks together; they build strength in their fingers and hands, and increase eye-hand coordination. As they get older, and spatial reasoning skills develop, children are able to envision how planks can come together to make complex structures. Combining these hypotheses with careful observation and planning, these structures come to life. Additionally, KEVA planks offer an opportunity for counting, adding, observing scale, and dimensionality. They build language skills as children describe shapes, sizes, and their ideas. They foster cooperation, collaboration, and friendship. For older children, engineering, architectural, and artistic experiments result in towers, bridges, sculptures, and contraptions.
“This exhibit taps into the human desire to create and build, and it has an inherent appeal to all ages. You see wonderful family interactions. Parents working with their kids, and kids building together. It’s very much an exhibit that everyone does with it what they want,” said Alexander Goldowsky, the Museum’s Senior Vice President of Exhibits and Programs. “You see people taking on all sorts of challenges from engineering of how to build bridges, cantilevers and counterweights, to people who really approach it on an aesthetic level, looking at patterns and designs.”
Research indicates that construction play can boost mathematic ability, spatial reasoning, and executive function, and that children who play with blocks like KEVA planks may be more successful at higher level math subjects like algebra and calculus when they get older. KEVA planks are for children of all ages. They give children the chance to be creators in their own right and discover something new.
For additional information, please visit http://www.BostonChildrensMuseum.org
About Boston Children's Museum
Boston Children’s Museum engages children and families in joyful discovery experiences that instill an appreciation of our world, develop foundational skills, and spark a lifelong love of learning. More information about Boston Children’s Museum can be found at http://www.BostonChildrensMuseum.org. Become a fan of the Museum on Facebook and follow us on Twitter
Hours and Admission
The Museum is open daily from 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. and Fridays until 9:00 p.m. Adults, $14, children (1-15) and senior citizens, $14; children under 12 months and Museum members are always free. Fridays 5:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m., all visitors $1.
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Jo-Anne Baxter, Boston Children's Museum, http://BostonChildrensMuseum.org, +1 (617) 986-3702, [email protected]
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