“Summer Slide” sounds like a fun activity, but in reality it represents the learning loss many children experience during the months when they are not in school. Research by John Hopkins University showed that children can lose a month or more in their skills as measured on academic tests in reading and math. That the decline is far worse for children from lower-income households. Summer learning loss appears to be cumulative, too, and over time can make a huge difference in achievement levels in school.

Last year Treehouse celebrated 25 years of providing exhibits and programs to families and schools in Northern Utah. We asked our members to volunteer to help us as “Silver Celebration Families,” who would allow us to photograph them and use their pictures in our publicity about this milestone birthday. They also wrote us a letter about why coming to Treehouse has been important to them. A professional photographer helped us by photographing each family and the photos were so great that we made a series of posters you can find around the Museum.

Right now at Treehouse we are hosting a display of vintage comics in our Gazebo on the main staircase landing. We have giant comic book pages, original comic book art, figures, lunch boxes, and other comic book based merchandise and even a great life-size Spider Man. Most of these items come from the collection of member dad Pat Murphy who generously loaned them to Treehouse to extend our “Be the Hero of Your Own Story” gallery.

Visitors have noticed some big changes happening on Treehouse’s second level. The beloved Music Room exhibit has disappeared for a time to make way for a new exhibit based on early natural science concepts. The exhibit, called “Walk in the Woods,” is geared for ages 3 to 8 and focuses on seasonal changes, Utah animals, plants, birds, and reptiles. There’s a winter cave where Mama Bear sleeps.

Each year Treehouse Children’s Museum offers three or four Artists in Residence experiences, introducing children and their parents to working professionals in the arts who share how they make their stories come to life on a page or on a stage.

Every year Treehouse closes for three weeks in September, but it's not for a vacation! Instead, we do a deep, thorough cleaning of the entire Museum and take care of painting and maintenence projects that are hard to do when we're open.

One of the biggest projects during this time is to clean our giant tree. It takes several days and quite a few staff members to drape parts of the tree with plastic and then wash the dust off with "wands" that mist the thousands of leaves on our tree with water. At this time, you could say Treehouse becomes a Rain Forest.

At Treehouse we have a quote on one of our walls above an art collection of works created by children from around the globe. The quote is from Mahatma Gandhi who said, “If we are to reach real peace in this world, we shall have to begin with the children.”

It seems old-fashioned in this age of digital data, but children need to hand print to be better readers. A recent article in Psychology Today by Dr. Victoria L. Dunckley asserts, based on newer research, that children who can’t write well don’t learn to read as easily because they simply don’t have as strong a visual-motor imprint for letter recognition.