Village Grocery

This bright colorful exhibit features child-size shopping carts, cashier aprons, a cash register with a scanner, cloth reusable shopping bags, learning cards to assist young shoppers in selecting a balanced diet, and well stocked shelves to make any shopping list complete. This new realistic pint-sized market enables children to make choices, build color and shape recognition, solve problems, practice social skills, obtain math readiness skills, and introduces the food pyramid.

Frozen Shadows

Press the flash button, walk over to the wall, pose, and, flash! your shadow remains on the wall. The material on the wall of our Frozen Shadow Room absorbs light energy and re-emits it for several seconds. Where you made a shadow, less light hits the wall and less light is re-emitted. Your shadow remains after you move away.

A Child's Trip to China

Visitors to the new China exhibit will be immersed in a model of spaces that reflect the culture of today's Chinese children through hands-on components, activities, and decor. The exhibit contains elements for pretend and role-play such as a pavilion, a character writing station, traditional costumes for dress-up, a popular Chinese game, and artifacts and music of the region. A photomural depicting the Great Wall of China, a whimsical painted mural of pandas in a bamboo forest, and a mural of the countryside in China will adorn the walls of the exhibit room.

The exhibit features pictures and journal entries of two local Chinese girls, who were adopted into families from the United States as babies from an orphanage in Beijing. The girls and their families traveled to China last July as part of a Families With Children From China excursion to see their birth country.

The China exhibit project is made possible, in part, by funding from the Marion County Cultural Development Corporation and Oregon Cultural Trust, and donations from Salem Multicultural Institute, The Shutterbug - Parivz & Maudie Samiee, Kwan's Original Cuisine, and Wei & Bill Anderson

This exhibit is funded by Marion Cultural Development Corporation, the Oregon Cultural Trust, Salem Multicultural Institute, Parviz & Maudie Samiee - Shutterbug, Kwan's Original Cuisine, and Wei & Bill Anderson.

The River Room

Interactive components focus on concepts pertaining to the river such as: the biology of plants and animals, history, transportation, industrial and commercial uses, recreational uses, importance in agriculture, preservation and ecology. Special features of the exhibit include water resources wall components, an aquatic insect study area with microscopes, and a touch wall about the various levels of a river. A history wall allows children to role-play and learn interesting facts about the centerpiece of Northwest Oregon, the Willamette River.