For a handful of parents in the Santa Clarita Valley, finding a summertime activity while keeping cool from the heat can be difficult with limited options. But a fun alternative for kids might be underway.
The nonprofit LEAP Children’s Museum, or Learn, Experience, Act and Play, hosted a pop-up event last weekend at the Valencia Town Center that gave children the opportunity to play with construction-themed toys and play stations.
The organization’s president, Kari McCoy, said she hopes the idea for a children’s museum in the SCV might be more feasible in the future, with plans and a community effort to hopefully purchase a more permanent space than a pop-up playground at the mall.
“The idea was to have a really fun and engaging space for kids to want to put down their screens, get out from their houses and be imaginative,” McCoy said. “We thought this was something that we were going to take a long time to build, but because of the demand and the excitement that the city had, and the community had for it, we’ve just had a lot of forward momentum.”
McCoy said she came up with the idea out of concern for her three boys who were constantly on their screens, like a large portion of the younger generation. The idea behind the museum, McCoy said, is to have a more unconventional, hands-on learning experience.
“I’d try to imagine what it’s going to be like in their life, and feel engaged with learning in a different way,” McCoy said. “They’re active and they don’t want to just sit and be talked at. They want to be doing trial-and-error problem solving, engaged with the materials.”
The pop-up event featured construction-themed stations, including hands-on puzzles to fix a “broken” plastic water pipe and a sandbox filled with toy dump trucks and rubber mulch.
Some parents, like resident Stephanie Tran, said they feel like having a family-friendly attraction like a children’s museum would make a great addition to the SCV community.
“We have such a large family-oriented community out here, so it would be great to have something fun like that,” Tran said.
Young Kim, another parent living in the SCV, also said that it was nice to have an activity that didn’t require her and her son Lukas to be out in the summer heat.
“There hasn’t been lots of local activities for little kids during the summer, especially with it being warm,” Kim said. “I thought it was a great opportunity.”
During their opening reception Friday, McCoy said that LEAP had successfully sold out the pop-up, which was scheduled just for the weekend. But since the event sold 900 tickets, the organization was able to extend the attraction to this weekend, Aug. 2-4.
More information about the exhibit and tickets can be found on the organization’s website, leapmuseum.org.
