During the summer of 2024, the Museum opened a temporary outdoor program space called the Curiosity Kitchen. This play kitchen, located by the Museum’s main entrance, offered daily summer activities, often with natural materials, for the public to engage with. This hands-on experience encouraged visitors to explore using their senses and embrace the joy of creative, messy play. Each day, staff members would choose a different activity theme and provide a variety of ingredients for the families to play with, including mud, bubbles, shaving cream, sand, pinecones, flower petals, acorn caps, paint, and seaweed. Visitors were also provided with real pots and pans, scoops, whisks, and cupcake tins to help spark their culinary imagination. 

A few activity highlights include making mud pies by mixing together soil and water and pouring the mud into pie tins and cupcake molds. During “paint day,” visitors were able to put on an apron, grab some paint, and use the walls of the Curiosity Kitchen as their canvas. One day, staff members hid gemstones under layers of dirt and provided scoops and shovels for kids to mine for treasure. There was also a beach theme where the entire kitchen was covered in sand, seashells, and seaweed. The staff members working in the kitchen often heard the phrase, “This is the best thing ever!” from the children playing in the Kitchen. Over the nine weeks that Curiosity Kitchen was open, over 6,800 adults and children visited to play, making it a memorable summer program at the Museum for both visitors and staff.