• Aerial view of Millikin Campus

    Community Partners

    Children’s Museum of Illinois & Millikin’s School of Education

    Children playing

    The Children’s Museum of Illinois and Millikin University’s School of Education have collaborated for the past two years, developing exciting ways for children and families to engage in learning experiences in the indoor and outdoor spaces at the Museum.

    School of Education faculty and Children’s Museum staff worked together to create “Messy Materials” in a Reggio-inspired outdoor classroom, filled with many hands-on, child-centered experiences that promote critical thinking and other 21st century skills.  In this way, the School of Education has helped the Museum develop an ecological approach in providing learning materials from the natural environment – such as wood, rocks, sand – that are more meaningful from the children’s own community of Decatur.  In their “work,” the children create their own structures and add on to others’ work in a learning environment that promotes exploration and open-ended problem solving.

    The School of Education has also worked with the Museum to provide an annual trip to the Museum to every 1st grader in Decatur Public Schools.

    For more about the Children’s Museum of Illinois, visit www.CMofIL.org