Miami Children’s Museum getting a $20M upgrade

An ongoing $20 million renovation of the Miami Children’s Museum, scheduled for completion in 2018, is designed to advance its mission of preparing kids for school with exhibits that serve as playful learning tools.

Among other exhibits updated or added, the renovated museum will feature a tiny Publix Super Market where kids can gather groceries in little carts and take them to checkout lanes with actual scanners.

The lineup also will include a PortMiami exhibit with information about importing and exporting, where kids also can steer a boat by remote control and get the experience of operating a freight crane; and The Sketch Aquarium, an interactive virtual aquarium where kids get crayons to make drawings of fish, which are digitally scanned and become animated additions to the virtual aquarium.

The leaders of the museum on Watson Island also are planning for a new entry building at the museum and a 20,000-square-foot building to house the museum’s preschool program for kids ages 1 to 5, called the Early Childhood Institute.

More than 430,000 guests annually visit the Miami Children’s Museum, which also houses a charter school called MCM with an enrollment of 400 in kindergarten through fifth grade.

Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership developed the master plan for the museum renovation, a project that dates back to 2013, when conceptual discussions about it began. The museum opened on Watson Island in 2003. [Miami Herald] – Mike Seemuth