What We Do

We give children the power of education, laughter and play.

Our mission is to create extraordinary experiences that champion the wonder and joy of childhood. Our Museum exists to support children and the adults who love and teach them, to make sense of the world, to integrate new information with prior knowledge and organize it into meaningful understandings.

Children are the Heroes of Their Own Stories

At the Children’s Museum, we have always believed in young children as “intellectual explorers,” (Lind 1999), but in the past decade, emerging science on brain development and plasticity has given us a much bigger and more specific understanding of how young children learn. Rather than the traditional metaphor of a young child as a "blank slate" on which adults imprint knowledge, we are learning more and more about how children—beginning in infancy—constantly analyze and make conclusions about the world around them.

We see children as protagonists, respect the fundamental competency of children, and believe that all children possess an extraordinary wealth of inborn abilities and potential, strength and creativity.

We believe:

• All children deserve respect and opportunities to cultivate their innate capacity for creativity, originality, joy and connection.
• Play is invaluable to children's development. High-quality, open-ended play—in which children invent the narrative, inhabit the roles and initiate the action—is vital for its own sake AND for the long and short-term benefits it confers on children's bodies, minds and spirits.
• Our environments support children in the making of meaning and construction of knowledge through exploration and interaction with intriguing phenomena, authentic tools, beautiful materials and other human beings.
• Caring, responsive adult interaction is critical to children's healthy growth and development. The Museum supports adults in the vital work of parenting by presuming positive intentions—all parents and caregivers want the best for their children and are doing the very best they can in the moment.
• Families—defined broadly as groups of children and adults connected by love—deserve welcoming environments that are attentive to their needs and support their goals related to learning, to connection and to experiencing joy together.
• Adult engagement within a free-choice learning environment is necessarily diverse and multi-faceted. We provide multiple entry points for adult engagement, integrating into exhibits and programs opportunities for grown-ups to observe, facilitate, collaborate and enjoy their children.
• Early experiences in informal learning environments support development of children's dispositions for learning such as: curiosity, cooperation, confidence, creativity, enthusiasm, persistence, imagination.

Museum Educational Focus

Building on what we know about play and its potential to enhance a child’s development, the Museum’s exhibits are rich with open-ended materials and opportunities for children to create, invent, solve problems and tell their own stories. Our goal is to create a space that acknowledges, celebrates and extends the wealth of abilities and potential that young children possess.

“Neuroscientists tell us that the type of learning that occurs in [museums]—self-directed, experiential, content-rich—promotes executive function skills that can shape a child’s success in life. The experiences, resources, and interactions provided by libraries and museums build brains and fuel a love of learning.” –Institute of Museum and Library Services, Growing Young Minds Report, 2013

The Children’s Museum of Denver at Marsico Campus strives to welcome children and their caregivers into an environment that is beautiful, tranquil, and full of interesting invitations and spaces to explore, create, represent, express, and wonder...all in the service of making meaning from their experiences in the world, and forging caring connections with the children and adults around them.