Children's Muzeum in Boston..& Queen Noor of Jordan

I had the opportunity on May 7th 2007 to accompany the DPM wife's entourage to the Children's Muzeum in Boston. It was an interesting & knowledgeable experience on my part. Simple ideas but made easy & practical by the staff & administrators of the unique facility. It doesn't take a big, expensive building to achieve their objectives.! I suppose its the contents that matters most. The children's program there is an outlet for mothers, fathers and even caretakers to bring their infants / toddlers to play & learn from the facility. Such things as sand, water, bubbles, lights... are just a few of the elements creatively designed to entice the physical as well as provoke the imagination of the smaller children - which is the main focus of the DPM wife's initiative back home. She mentioned the increasing social ills among youngsters these days - ahaaa..glad SOMEBODY noticed! - and would like to implement a similar program for 5 year olds and below.
Like the activities done in any nursery or 'tadika' in Malaysia, the bigger children also get to do coloring, painting, cutting...& singing. What I like most however, are the life skills that are playfully taught and learnt by them. Simple examples are the do's & don'ts whenever they are in a kitchen, or what they have to do when they are up on an aeroplane or the buying and selling that happens in an ordinary sundry shop. All these activities take place in the model kitchen, a pretend aircraft cabin and also in the little model shop that is equipped even with a cash register!.

I remember the 'pondok2' we used to play during our childhood days... :-) No one taught us the 'how to's' then .. I suppose it WAS a process of learning life skills - by imitating adults & doing whatever comes naturally. We did not have dolls back then either - barbie , cabbage patch or whatever ...we used the smaller kids as babies & sometimes makeshift puppets out of paper with cutout paper clothes. Those were the days....



Look who's waiting patiently for the bus! :-)






On May 8th, we had the opportunity listening to Queen Noor of Jordan on the topic of BIOTECHNOLOGY AND ITS IMPACT ON GLOBAL HEALTH during one of the luncheon talks at BIO2007. She talked about the actual needs and the commercial demands of Biotechnology : Blue BioTech - safety of water & Green BioTech - food grown without much water, building peace through King Hussein Environmental International Organisation, being a patron to World Conservation Union, support agriculture for future harvests.... Security , water, food & healthcare will contribute in the times to come... So glad I made it for her speech. Of course, I would be exhilarated even more if we also made it for the luncheon talk by Michael J.Fox - Founder, The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research the day before... ;-)