Connecting Kids to History with Museum Exhibitions

In this title, top museum professionals present and show how history exhibits can offer a point of entry to the past by empowering children to connect to history through rich, multi-sensory, experience-based learning. Kids have profound and important relationships to the past - but they don´t experience history in the same way as adults. How does an audience focused on the ´here and now´ explore the ´then and now´? For museum professionals and those involved in informal history education and exhibit design, this book is the essential new guide to creating meaningful and memorable exhibits that connect children to the past. D. Lynn McRainey and John Russick bring together top museum professionals to present state-of-the-art research and practice to show how history museums are offering a point of entry to the past by empowering children to connect to history through exhibitions rich in multi-sensory, experience-based learning. Contributors systematically cover educational theory and developmental frameworks, how audience and evaluation inform research and development, the role of experience in delivering content, and how new technologies and interpretive tools enhance the visitor experience, including labels and messages, media, interactives, collections, and exhibit design. The only book to focus comprehensively on history exhibits for kids, "Creating History Exhibits for Kids" shows how to enhance the experiences of a vitally important - but frequently the least understood - museum audience.