SIOUX CITY | A couple of months shy of LaunchPAD's one-year anniversary, Operations Director Jason Allen said the children's museum continues to evolve and improve.
The hands-on, interactive museum, 623 Pearl St., opened its doors last February. The $6.9 million facility was 13 years in the making, according to Allen.
"It's been a labor of love for the community," he said of LaunchPAD Children's Museum, where children play and learn about science, technology, engineering and math. "People are very excited that we're open finally."
Allen said museum staff are taking comments and suggestions from visitors to heart. While people crowded to the museum after its opening, he said visitation has leveled off. He encourages people who visited earlier on to return.
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"We've changed things up. It's a much better guest experience than it was before," he said. "We're working on programming that will benefit all age groups."
Allen said the former vending area has been downsized and the space was transformed into a schoolhouse. A retail kiosk also has been added.Â
"Several other areas around the museum we've improved upon just with either signage or different products, like in the market we've changed out a lot of the products that were being used with better durable products," he said.
In the market and cafe area, children select fresh produce straight from the farm, fill their mini carts and shopping baskets and scan items in a checkout lane.
An exhibit that harnesses the power of wind to give children a physics lesson, Allen said, has been overhauled. The exhibit initially allowed children to manipulate scarves and plastic balls through a maze of wind tubing. Now it has been reconfigured to allow children to build flying devices and test them in the wind tunnel.
The museum's agriculture exhibit continues the farm-to-table theme from the market and cafe area and features a model of a cow.
Other exhibits include "Me and You," which is designed to show children similarities and differences between them and other kids in their community and around the world. You can snap a selfie of yourself and then stand on two footprints to calculate your weight in pencils and leaves or measure your height in milk cartons and chickens.
The construction, mechanics and architecture area of the museum allows children to explore six simple machines: the lever, wheel and axle, pulley, inclined plane, wedge and screw. Using pulleys and conveyor belts, children can stack foam blocks and move plastic red balls through clear tubes to "make it rain."
Visitors to the museum can get their hands wet, while learning about groundwater, irrigation and locks and dams. They can position islands to change the way water flows and even create a whirlpool. They can race boats in another area of the water table, play with LEGOs under a rain cloud or catch fish with a magnetic pole in a pond filled with frogs, turtles and lily pads.
Plans are set to begin construction on a half-acre park directly across the street from LaunchPAD Children's Museum. The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2017. The park will feature green space, trees, a sensory garden, seating areas and tables. The park is being financed by a $500,000 donation from Regina Roth, a community leader and co-founder of Dakota Dunes-based Beef Products Inc.
"We've always seen that as an extension of us," Allen said of the park. "We would love in the future to do some programming from there and just make it a destination where people not only will come to the museum, but will maybe stop there and have lunch or take a walk and come back to the museum or visit other downtown locations."
