Exhibits for Hands-on Discovery

Habitot's hands on exhibits and indoor play areas are especially for infants, toddlers and young children. The museum's six small-scale theme exhibits create a learning, discovery and play space for kids and their families. Fun exhibits encourage parent child interactions with multi-sensory learning games and activities. Exhibits reflect the ethnically diverse and environmentally sensitive Bay Area community. Exhibits are open daily.

Exhibit News

Rocketship Returns

Back by popular demand, our Rocketship and Mission Control exhibit will return after Labor Day. After a nine-month loan to two children's museums in southern California, we'll need to repair and refurbish our exhibit and bring in some new props. We're grateful for any donations or in-kind support you can give to support this effort.

little grocery cafe	waterworks	make-up table	infant garden	wiggle wall

Current Exhibits

Waterworks
The Water play gallery offers three components: river ramp for creating and damming streams; a pumping station problem solving activity and a water table filled with waterwheels, buckets with holes, pitchers and fishing rods; activities help young children formulate scientific concepts of gravity and motion, the power of falling water, and pumping.Surrounding walls offer mural-making with foam blocks on a water/ocean theme.

Drop-in Art Studio
Every day, a new activity in Habitot's Drop-in Art Studio! Come prepared to "get messy" with creative, open-ended art -- just what young children need for brain development and hands-on skills. The studio features an enormous paintable wall for murals and group painting projects; a sculpture table with clay, play-doh, gak or other sculpture material; and a mixed-media table offering collage, printing, finger painting, foam painting, recycled art, paper mache -- a different activity every day. The studio is staffed full-time with knowledgeable art educators.

Family Art Days - Takes place on Sundays, September through May
Hands-on Art Studio Program - Learn more!
Hands-on Art Studio Gallery

Little Town Grocery & Café
Small-scale shopping carts, fruits, vegetables and breads sorted into grocery bins, and cash registers create the context of a grocery, while at the adjacent counters, on bar stools and at tables of the café, parents and children order from menus and serve food to customers; experiences in this exhibit facilitate social learning and parent-child interactions. Some of the items in the grocery bins, plastic sushi rolls, matzo bread, burritos and mangos, have sparked conversations between families identifying foods common to their cultures.

Infant-Toddler Garden
A picket fence/gated area especially for infants, crawlers and early walkers. Floor to ceiling murals and softly carpeted floor surround the very young with the images of a garden; interactives like a wooden carrot patch for harvesting and replacing carrots, a Velcro wall of soft block shapes, a pretend pond and a butterfly mobile provide appropriate tactile and visual stimulation for infants. The culture of food, gardening and agriculture is well-developed in the Bay Area and this exhibit introduces these themes in developmentally-appropriate ways.

Wiggle Wall
Gives children a worm's eye view of their underground tunnels; children navigate through a vertical maze of simple passageways from floor-to-ceiling; parents and children can see each other through net covered openings and giant optic lenses; exhibit presents memory challenges, builds confidence and helps children see the world through someone else's eyes.

To support future exhibit development, Donate Now.

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