Tag: Volunteer

Discovery Center unveils new roof for Reptilian Pavilion

The Kansas Children’s Discovery Center is throwing a little shade at its guests in 2022.

That’s because the Discovery Center on Friday, May 13, unveiled a new, scaly roof on its Reptilian Pavilion that offers a cool place to play during the summer. The project began in 2020, with students from the University of Kansas School of Architecture and Design starting to design the pavilion. Construction began during spring 2021 with the base structure, and was then completed this spring by eight KU architecture students and presented to the public during an informal open house.

The student volunteers originally planned to use terra cotta tiles for the roof, according to KU associate professor Keith Van de Riet, but decided to instead go with recycled, aluminum traffic signs that were shaped to look like scales by the students. Van de Riet oversaw the project, as well as the New Years Pavilion that was constructed by another group of KU architecture students and unveiled in February 2022.

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Thank you, Evergy Green Team!

The Kansas Children’s Discovery Center got a helping hand from a great group of volunteers from the Evergy Green Team on Tuesday, March 29.

The volunteers spent several hours cutting down problematic trees, laying mulch at the Chinese New Years Pavilion and dragon sculpture, clearing excessive brush and removing rocks, wood beams and other debris to make the Discovery Center’s Certified “Nature Explore” Outdoor Classroom a safe, visually appealing area for children and their families to learn, grow and play.

Evergy has been a big supporter of the Kansas Children’s Discovery Center for many years. It provided considerable funding and volunteers for a project that involved making the Discovery Center’s pond and stream more interactive and safe, helped oversee a recent prescribed burn of the Discovery Center’s prairie restoration habitat, constructed the Discovery Center’s original Epic Sandbox in 2017 and has donated to help fund many of the Discovery Center’s great educational programs.

The Green Team itself is a group of employees and retiree volunteers that has taken on environmental projects across Kansas and Missouri since 1989. The team completes 50 to 70 projects per year, mostly on weekends and evenings, according to its website. The Green Team collaborates with conservation groups, agencies and schools in enhancing and fostering an understanding of the Kansas and Missouri environment, as well as improving natural habitats and helping provide access to important environmental areas.

Kansas Children’s Discovery Center offers high-quality, interactive experiences to inspire a lifelong love of learning for every child. Volunteers support our mission by creating these memorable experiences for every family that walks through our doors. Volunteers engage children in fun, educational activities, pitch in at special events, maintain our outdoor space and keep exhibit areas ready for play. If your organization is interested in a fun volunteer day at the Kansas Children’s Discovery Center, call our volunteer coordinator at (785) 783-8300. We have indoor and outdoor projects for any size group.

Thank you, Evergy Green Team!

 

MORE VOLUNTEER NEWS: Read more about future educators from TCALC volunteering their time here.

 

View more photos from Evergy Green Team’s day of volunteering!

 

Handmade dinosaur play table adds splash of color, fun for Topeka Dino Days

From left, Maya Beyer and Draque Carver show off a dinosaur table that they collaborated on creating for the main floor of the Kansas Children’s Discovery Center for Topeka Dino Days and the unveiling of the Tiny Titans: Dinosaur Eggs and Babies exhibit at the Discovery Center.

 

It’s been just over a month since Tiny Titans: Dinosaur Eggs and Babies opened at the Kansas Children’s Discovery Center, and the response has been terrific!

Along with the exhibit, which is located in the multimedia gallery, several new dino-themed features were added to the main floor of the Discovery Center, as well. One of those additions – a long, wooden table with a built-in landscape and a painted mural as the background – was created by a pair of employees with a flair for artistic expression. 

Maya Beyer, a part-time gallery assistant and student at Johnson County Community College, teamed up with Draque Carver, who has worked for the Discovery Center since 2014 as the exhibit and facilities maintenance manager, to create the popular attraction.

Beyer was commissioned by the Discovery Center to paint the mural, a process that took between 16 and 20 hours to complete. Carver then created the table out of wood and built a colorful landscape for the dinosaur toys to stomp around on.

“I was so thrilled when KCDC asked me to paint for them,” Beyer said. “It’s an honor to have my work featured in the museum. My mural is a landscape that guests can interact with.”

According to Dr. Rachel E. White, playing with objects such as toy dinosaurs gives children a chance to practice both fine and gross motor skills, depending on the size of the objects. It also contributes to cognitive development, including learning about the nature of objects, problem-solving, creativity and foundational skills for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The table is located near the art pavilion at the back of the Discovery Center.

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Learning to teach: Future educators from TCALC volunteer time at Discovery Center

From left, Ainsley Schimmel, a junior at Topeka West, creates a cat using a Rigamajig Basic Builder kit as Topeka West senior Emma Banka-Bayless watches her. The students are part of a group of volunteers from the Topeka Center for Advanced Learning and Careers, better known as TCALC.

A tightly knit group of high school students from Topeka Unified School District 501 have been volunteering their time and energy to make the Kansas Children’s Discovery Center a better place for its young visitors, as well as honing their skills as potential future educators.

These six student leaders are members of the Topeka Center for Advanced Learning and Careers, or TCALC — an innovative program created through business partnerships to help teach youths about different career pathways they are interested in following. TCALC has several different professional pathways it offers to students, with this group representing the teaching pathway.

“These students are juniors and seniors in high school,” said Diane Kimsey, elementary math consulting teacher for TCALC. “They represent Highland Park, Topeka High and Topeka West. We meet every day for half a day and they all think that perhaps they would like to be teachers eventually. We have those who want to work with elementary, we have middle school dreamers and we have high school dreamers.”

So far in the four weeks they have been volunteering at the Discovery Center, the students have helped clean up the Discovery Center’s outdoor nature area, as well as creating educational materials for children. Last Wednesday, March 2, they taught young visitors of the Discovery Center about engineering using Rigamajig Basic Builder kits.

“Covid has kept us from being in the classrooms as much as we’d like to be, but at the same time we’ve had incredible opportunities,” Kimsey said. “For the last month, we’ve been here (at the Discovery Center) on Wednesdays, and we’re looking forward to this partnership to continue through the rest of the school year.”

The students came to the Discovery Center after contacting Visit Topeka to support Topeka Dino Days, a communitywide dinosaur exhibition. Staff at Visit Topeka connected the educators to the Discovery Center to support the museum as they opened the traveling Tiny Titans: Dinosaur Eggs and Babies.

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KU architecture students design, construct New Years Pavilion for Discovery Center

Students from the University of Kansas joined the Lei family for a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Tuesday, Feb. 1, as the Discovery Center unveiled its New Years Pavilion.

The Kansas Children’s Discovery Center unveiled a new feature this month.

Thanks to the generosity of the Lei family, and the hard work of some talented college students, the Discovery Center was able to replace its old pavilion with a New Years Pavilion that blends a beautiful yet informative design to help people of all ages learn about East Asian culture. A pavilion previously on the site was dedicated in 2013 with support from family and friends in memory of Garbo Lei. The new pavilion will enhance the existing Garbo Lei Family Treasure Garden. 

Eighteen students from the University of Kansas School of Architecture worked together to design and build the pavilion, which included utilizing design elements that the donor had requested. The structure was built with wood, steel and terra cotta materials.

“A good detail we did is the center is the Chinese lunar calendar, so it’s got all twelve animals on it that (each) represent one year,” said Ashlyn Reece, a third-year student at the architecture school.

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