It’s not too hard to figure out which are the most popular exhibits at JFK Health World, the new hands-on health learning center in Barrington. Just follow the crowd and commotion.
“I want to do it again! I want to do it again!” screamed a group of children one day this winter as they stood outside The Dark Crawl. The exhibit is a pitch-black maze that children crawl through, using their sense of touch to compensate for their lost sense of sight as they find their way to the end of the tunnel.
Two of the museum explorers on this day were this writer’s children, 8-year-old Alison and 5-year-old Jenna. They were on a mission: Play, explore and help the Tribune distinguish between the fun and the not-so-fun, the effective and the not-so-effective exhibits at JFK Health World, which opened last October.
JFK Health World is divided into six theme areas, where kindergarten through 8th-grade kids can learn about the human body, nutrition, safety, recycling and conservation, the stages of life and health care. According to Kathleen Kaminski, JFK Health World’s director of marketing, attendance averaged 400 visitors a day until schools took their winter break. Then, attendance jumped to 1,000 a day. But the 85,000-square-foot museum is spacious enough so that even with the big increase, the place didn’t feel too crowded.
The Dark Crawl was one of the exhibits to receive a big thumbs up. Alison applied her favorite phrase to describe it. “Totally cool,” she said as she crawled out. “Can I go in again?”
Outside the tunnel is a sign asking children to go through the maze only twice, but the experience apparently is irresistible.
“This was my fourth time,” bragged one boy.
Not everyone figured out how to use their sense of touch in getting through, though. Several kids came out saying they’d lightly bumped their heads. Our 8-year-old explorer came out unscathed, figuring out you have to lead with your hand, not your head. “You just have to feel the wall with your hand to see which way it goes,” she said.
Our 5-year-old, by the way, couldn’t vouch for the effectiveness of this exhibit. She wouldn’t go in, even though the museum staff offers to turn lights on for young explorers fearful of the dark.
Right next to the Dark Crawl is another of the museum’s more popular and creative exhibits, one of the few where there was a wait in line for a turn. In Reaction Hockey, the children see their images televised on a screen in front of them. They see themselves standing in a hockey goal as pucks fly at them (not really, just visually on the screen). Their job is to move their arms and block the pucks.
The sign outside the exhibit talks about reaction times and conditioned reflexes, but smaller children probably won’t care much about anything but seeing how many shots they can block. Still, it’s a unique experience that even some of the adults were trying, and our explorers deemed the exhibit “hard” but definitely worth the short wait.
When visitors enter the museum, the first thing they see is a huge, 85-foot fiberglass model of a child that visitors can walk through. Our explorers found one part of this adventure less than thrilling.
After entering the middle of the child and finding a huge, crawl-through heart, the children asked for an explanation of what they were seeing. But none of the heart’s parts was labeled, and the only sound in the room was the ta-dum, ta-dum beat of the music meant to simulate the heart’s beating.
“They should tell you, `This is this or that is that,’ ” Alison said.
But just outside the heart room, they found a touchscreen computer that told them more than any kid could want to know about the human body. With software called “ADAM: The Inside Story,” the computer was fairly easy for novices to use and gave up-close looks at the body’s various systems. Our explorers picked muscles and were able to watch and listen to explanations of how muscles work. Then they learned about eyes, discovering why their noses run when they cry, and that eyes blink an average of 15 times a minute.
There are roughly 15 touchscreen computers throughout the museum. The few we used were easy to navigate and, like “ADAM,” worth the time spent on them.
In the back of this huge model of a child is the Brain Theater, where visitors can experience a 25-minute film that’s more than a mere educational movie. It’s interactive, with audience members doing things such as beeping horns attached to their seats when the film’s narrator instructs them to and trying to catch Nerf balls that are hurled at them.
Along the way, they learn what makes the brain a truly amazing organ. For children older than 6 or so, Brain Theater is worthwhile. Younger kids, on the other hand, may lose interest after the novelty of horn beeping wears off. Jenna, for example, whispered, “What in the world are they talking about?” when kinesthesis was touched upon, and later deemed the film to be “totally boring.”
She did, though, find the area devoted to the five senses much more to her liking, partly because that’s what she has been studying in kindergarten and also because the exhibits in that area were successful in piquing her interest. She liked reaching into a touch box and trying to guess what she was feeling, and sniffing from five different bottles to guess the odors.
In the Living Gadget area, which is devoted to the basics of human anatomy, children can look at a picture to identify bones and try to put the bones together on the tabletop to build a child. Little kids liked trying to figure out which bone was which, but it was a little frustrating getting the bones to fit together.
Our explorers made a quick run through the Us and Stuff area, which is devoted to healthy eating, but didn’t find much to their liking. A couple of the exhibits weren’t open yet (but all are now), so it might be early to pass judgment. A food pyramid with plastic food that had to be placed in the correct food groups held their interest for only a minute. There was also an area with giant molds of fruit that seemed to attract the youngest kids and gave them a place to climb and let off steam.
The kids did have fun pressing buttons on the exhibit that compares the cost of consumer goods with the number of cigarette packages that may be bought with that same amount of money. It convinced them more than ever, they said, that they don’t want to be smokers.
The Health Village area was much busier, and our explorers found a lot that they wanted to do here in the doctor’s and dentist’s offices. Beyond the usual tools of the professions to play with, they loved looking at X-rays of teeth of children their own ages and watching the pupil of a model eye get bigger and smaller as varying amounts of light were shined into it.
Going into the back of the real rescue vehicle proved to be disappointing at first. “There’s nothing to do in there unless you’re the driver,” said Alison. But those who do get to sit in front can watch a video on the front windshield showing what ambulance drivers see as they race through the streets. Any kid who watched it got a better idea of why cars need to stop when they hear an ambulance coming.
The Oak Forest area, a 3,500-square-foot replica of an Illinois oak forest, has a tree house and slide to entertain the younger explorers while many of the older ones were busy doing crafts projects. Alison had to be dragged away from the spot where children were making pictures by rubbing crayons on top of paper with metal moldings of leaves and insects underneath. Other children crowded around a table in the recycling area, creating artwork by gluing together recycled materials.
It took our explorers four hours to make it through JFK Health World. That included a half-hour stop in Georgi’s Garden Cafe, where the lunch was better than your average cafeteria fare. Our explorers said the museum, too, was better than they expected. They hadn’t been too sure about an outing to a place where they’d learn about staying healthy.
But as soon as they got in the car for the ride home, they wanted to know, “Can we come back here again?”
THESE ARE THE POPULAR SPOTS
Kathleen Kaminski, JFK Health World’s director of marketing, confirmed that the Dark Crawl and Reaction Hockey have been two of the more popular exhibits since the museum opened. She also listed the House of Hazards and the whole Oak Forest area as drawing crowds.
The House of Hazards, where children look for things such as overloaded electrical outlets, may not be too exciting for those walking through alone. But when there’s a demonstration going on for a school group, for example, the bedroom door closes and gets warm to the touch, the room begins to fill with smoke (actually non-toxic steam), and a hologram of a firefighter appears in the window. Kaminski says it’s a hit, and it teaches children about things such as alternate escape routes.
The Oak Forest has several big draws, says Kaminski, including a fossil hunt, where children can dig through sand for fossil replicas they can take home. They also have been crowding into the ranger station, where children can dress like spiders or butterflies or dig into a discovery kit (actually a tackle box with small activities that teach them about individual nature subjects, such as the parts of an insect).
She also says there are plans to enhance the heart room with labels and other interactive equipment.
“Our goal is that children will pick up and learn something in every area, so that when they walk out the door, they’ve learned enough about health and safety to build a healthier lifestyle,” Kaminski says.
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JFK Health World is open from noon to 5 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, noon until 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Admission is $4 for children and adults. An annual membership is $35 for an individual, $45 for a family of four or $65 for a family of five or more. Phone: 847-842-9100.
