Saturday, June 8, through Sunday, September 8
Family Museum, 2900 Learning Campus Drive, Bettendorf IA
In an era in which video games and cartoons take up a lot of children’s time, Bettendorf's Family Museum is prepared to combat childhood inertia with its new summer exhibition Run! Jump! Fly! Adventures in Action, the interactive exhibit – running June 8 through September 8 – in which children and adults can explore activities such as kung fu, surfing, snowboarding, yoga, and horizontal climbing.
Designed to get kids into action by playing and doing things they like to do, and boasting action-adventure themes popular in children’s books and movies, the homegrown Run! Jump! Fly! exhibit invites visitors to jump into action-star training through activities that build strength, coordination, balance, and endurance. Cultural spotlights and real-life stories of young people and families who are passionate about a particular activity aim to deepen visitors’ motivation about fitness, and as visitors move through the exhibit and have fun with physical activity, they will get ideas for how they can become more active daily. Throughout the exhibit, kids and accompanying adults stamp the activities they tried on Action Trackers. Visitors can also take home Action Tracker 3-Day Missions – activity logs that encourage people to get physically activity for a total of 60 minutes a day. The exhibit aims primarily at children ages five to 12, while ages two to five will also be able to join in the fun at many of the activities. Additionally, Run! Jump! Fly! Adventures in Action developers worked to make the exhibit activities accessible to visitors with varying physical abilities and developmental needs.
The Family Museum's latest exhibit features four adventure scenes and an action-star training center. In Surfing and Snowboarding, visitors don Hawaiian shirts or down-style vests, choose one of four balance boards – two basic and two advanced – and see how long they can stay on for the ride. In Kung Fu Forest, guests can push a button to trigger a sequence of lightbox images that guide the participant from still poses into a flow of action. With Climbing Canyon, a trailhead marker introduces four different trails: the Toddler Trail, Beginners’ Bend, Rugged Ridge, and the Extreme Expanse. Flycycle Sky lets visitors merge their imagination with physical activity when they strap on a bike helmet and climb on one of the Museum’s flycycles. And the action-star training center provides visitors with challenges of balance, strength, coordination and cardiovascular and muscular endurance through simple activities that kids can do at home.
Regular Family Museum hours are Mondays through Thursdays 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sundays noon to 5 p.m., and entry to Run! Jump! Fly! Adventures in Action is free with $5-9 admission. For more information, call (563)344-4106 or visit FamilyMuseum.org.
