The non-profit Treehouse Museum is rooted in the vital need of children to make meaningful connections through stories, imaginative play, literacy, and the arts.
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.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” ― Albert Einstein
Visitors often comment on how beautiful and unusual Treehouse Museum is. They tell us Treehouse isn’t like other museums, even other children’s museums they have visited, and they want to know why.
Not too long ago the New York Times published a story about the American Academy of Pediatrics urging parents to read aloud to their children from birth. That’s right: read aloud to your baby. From the day their child is born, parents should be concerned with healthy brain development, and nothing beats reading aloud to a child to enhance vocabulary and language skills.
What’s Santa’s favorite kind of cookie? Chocolate Chip, says the Big Guy in Red! So, that’s what we serve at the annual Milk and Cookies with Santa Party that’s for members only. Families were able to enjoy the exhibits, play some games with costumed staff and participate in a sing-along with Santa in the Treehouse Storybook Theater. Members-only parties are one of the perks of being a member of Treehouse and one of the ways the staff and Board are able to thank our members for their support – all year round.
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.”
