Children's Museum of Atlanta
Address: 275 Centennial Olympic Park Drive NW, Atlanta, Ga. 30313
Hours: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
Contact: http://childrensmuseumatlanta.org/; 404-659-5437
Encourage empathy and sensitivity in your little ones by taking them to an educational, inspirational and encouraging exhibit all about the nature of emotions and compassion.
Children's Museum of Atlanta's "XOXO: An Exhibit About Love & Forgiveness," which runs June 11 to Sept. 4, seeks to help both children and adults become more in touch with their feelings and the feelings of others.
This interactive exhibit was created by the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh and supported by the Fetzer Institute, an organization whose founder, John E. Fetzer, made it his mission to bring transformation, change and understanding to the world through love.
"Love is the core energy that rules everything; ... love is the one ingredient that holds us all together," Fetzer once said.
At the "XOXO" exhibit, your kiddos will get a chance to take part in these stations:
Tokens of love: Write a message of love on a piece of paper, then place it in a special compressor that will transform the paper into a heart-embossed token you can give to someone special.
Response wall: Write answers to questions about emotions and love, then read the answers other people wrote in order to build understanding.
Silhouettes: Trace the outline of a loved one's profile, an act that takes attentiveness and concentrated effort on both the tracer and the person sitting for the silhouette.
Reflection table: When you clear an area on the surface of the table, music will play;when covered again the music will stop.
Love letters: Bring back the art of letter writing as a way to express emotions by composing a letter to a loved one.
Empathy blocks: Blocks decorated withexpressions can be rearranged to create faces with a variety of emotions and reactions.
Art: Create crafts that encourage caring emotions and kindness, such as a necklace that contains your token of love, a personalized box, a love letter and a silkscreen print of your silhouette.
Emotional faces: Express different emotions when seeing word sequences on a screen, then make a video of your expressions.
Story puzzle: Make your own emotional story using puzzle pieces.
Release the negativity: Write something that frustrates or angers you on a piece of paper. That paper is shredded right before your eyes, symbolizing the release of negativity. All the shredded paper fills jars to form adisplay.
Tone phones: Learn how the tone of your voice can affect how others feel. As you talk into a special telephone, shapes on a screen will change depending on the tone of your voice.
Holding hands: Discover how holding hands with others can generate a loving, hope-filled message to the world; as participants hold hands, a circuit completes to display the message.
Balance: Cooperate with a loved one to achieve a goal in this activity that's a real balancing act. By sittingon a teeter-totter, you must work together to balance a ball.
Embrace: Enjoy unlocking happy sounds by hugginglittle egg-shaped sculptures, which will coo, laugh and make sweet sounds when embraced.
Museum admission costs $14.95 plus tax, and children under a year old get in free.
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