The Lutz Children's Museum is a small non-profit children's museum

Children's museum

Children's museums are institutions that provide exhibits and programs to stimulate informal learning experiences for children. In contrast with traditional museums that typically have a hands-off policy regarding exhibits, children's museums feature interactive exhibits that are designed to be...

 located in Manchester, Connecticut

Connecticut

Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...

, USA. It was founded in 1953 by the Manchester PTA in honor of the late Hazel Lutz. It is included in the Association of Children's Museums

Association of Children's Museums

The Association of Children's Museums is a Washington, D.C.–based organization that represents more than 300 children's museums in 23 countries throughout the world. The association began in 1962 as the American Association of Youth Museums and grew out of the desire for children's museums to meet...

 Reciprocal Program.

Mission

The museum is designed for children have both an entertaining and educational experience; the activities and exhibits promote "self-discovery and exploration

Exploration

Exploration is the act of searching or traveling around a terrain for the purpose of discovery of resources or information. Exploration occurs in all non-sessile animal species, including humans...

."

The mission of the Lutz Children's Museum is "to provide a multi-faceted museum for children to explore culture

Culture

Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...

, history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

, and the natural sciences through internal and external exhibits, programs, and experiences".

Education and events

The museum offers classes taught by its own curators to teach about museum artifacts and live animals, both of which are included in almost every program developed by the museum. Events such as trips, parties, or concerts also provide education to children by exposing them to the performing arts

Performing arts

The performing arts are those forms art which differ from the plastic arts insofar as the former uses the artist's own body, face, and presence as a medium, and the latter uses materials such as clay, metal or paint which can be molded or transformed to create some physical art object...

, wildlife

Wildlife

Wildlife includes all non-domesticated plants, animals and other organisms. Domesticating wild plant and animal species for human benefit has occurred many times all over the planet, and has a major impact on the environment, both positive and negative....

, and other similar aspects of both American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and International

International

----International mostly means something that involves more than one country. The term international as a word means involvement of, interaction between or encompassing more than one nation, or generally beyond national boundaries...

 culture

Culture

Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...

.

In addition, the Lutz also offers In-School Resource Lessons, in which the museum's curators travel to schools to deliver educational programming. "They travel with museum artifacts or live animals and sometimes appear in costume."
The Lutz Children's museum curators "typically have undergraduate degrees in their area of expertise, archaeology

Archaeology

Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...

 or biology

Biology

Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

 for example, plus advanced degrees in education and/or teaching certification."

Main Street 1943

The Lutz opened up the Main Street 1943 exhibit in the autumn of 2010. Main Street 1943 is an exhibit/walking/playing area built as a replica of Main Street in Manchester in the year 1943. There are hometown staples such as Marlow's department store, the typical Main Street apartment, and nods to World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 such as an old-fashioned radio, newspapers, and other similar artifacts. This exhibit explores the history and culture of Manchester, CT as well as the nation (and the world) in this period.

Farm Room

It can be argued that the Lutz Museum's most popular current exhibit is their "farm room," which houses a farm-related play exhibit, information and displays pertaining to working and living on a farm, and a statue of a cow that can actually be milked.

Animal Room

One of the staples of the museum is their Animal Room, which currently houses snakes, chinchillas, turtles, rabbits, various birds, and, most famously, Chuckles the woodchuck, who presides over the museum's annual Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day is a holiday celebrated on February 2 in the United States and Canada. According to folklore, if it is cloudy when a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day, it will leave the burrow, signifying that winter-like weather will soon end...

celebration.

Hazel Lutz

The late Hazel Lutz was an art teacher in the city of Manchester. She travelled often, collecting items along the way that she believed would interest her students. She organized a "museum" out of these trinkets in the storage closet of her schoolroom. As her collection grew, members of the community began to donate to Hazel Lutz's "museum," and soon became a collection of educational tools that could relate to most disciplines. The collection was moved to larger and larger spaces until the Lutz Children's Museum was founded in its current location in 1953. The museum still follows Hazel Lutz's mission of combining artifacts from the community and around the world to spark children's interest in education and culture.

External links

• Lutz Children's Museum website