Mt. Pleasant Discovery Museum Fund

The purpose of the Discovery Museum Fund is to support the startup of the Mt. Pleasant Discovery Museum that will benefit area children, targeting infants through children twelve years of age. The charitable purpose of the fund is to provide a fun, educational, and hands-on environment where children use curiosity to learn about their world.

The Mt. Pleasant Discovery Museum will feature exhibits that highlight areas such as science, math, art, music, literacy and recycling. Shelly Smith, a member of the Museum’s board explains, “A mother will be able to bring her three-year-old and ten-year-old children to the Museum and both will be entertained.” One exhibit, titled A Mile in My Shoes, will help children to better understand what it would be like to live with a disability. Another exhibit will be called World Music. Instruments including pianos, drums and a madinda, or African xylophone, have already been donated to the Museum. Volunteers have even created a drum bone, a cross between a drum and an organ, which will appear in the World Music exhibit upon its opening.

The Museum board hopes to reach a wide audience, regardless of socioeconomic status. The endowed fund will eventually help pay for museum admission to those who need it. Another goal of the Museum’s board is to benefit local businesses and schools. Smith said, “The children’s museum will look to use local industries, such as oil and gas, to educate children about the world around them.” Creating connections with local schools is also important to the Museum’s board of trustees. Once the Museum is established, the board will be looking for ways to partner with area schools by having exhibits that compliment state education benchmarks thereby creating unique field trip opportunities or traveling programming for individual classroom visits.