Children's Museum of Bogotá

Leonardo da Vinci Exhibit in the Children's Museum

The Children's Museum of Bogotá (Fundación Museo de los Niños) is a privately managed museum foundation in Bogotá, Colombia's capital city (The actual museum is located in Barrio J. Vargas), established in 1986 and aimed at teaching children about science, technology, culture and arts. The foundation operates the Children's Museum in an 8,000 m² (86,000 ft.²) building in the geographical center of Bogotá, in which over 23 different modules and hundreds of individual exhibits are housed. The museum serves approximately 150,000 visitors per year — 69% of them children under 11 years of age that come to "learn by playing" in the exhibits.

In addition to guided tours, the Children's Museum conducts workshops, special vacation programs for children and highly structured events for schools.

To celebrate their 15th anniversary, the museum invited the most important young Colombian artists to each paint a mural on the museum walls. This resulted in a collection of 42 murals which have become a landmark for art students in Bogotá. Another highly important program of the Museum is the "Computer Clubhouse" — an international program promoted by the Intel Corporation and the Museum of Science, Boston. "Computer Clubhouse" teaches children of low income families computer skills for computer animation, graphic design, composing and editing, as a mean to close the digital divide in our society. An introduction to robotics is also included in this program.

In the outer gardens of the museum a big real airplane (without actual function, fuel or electricity) is shown to teach the children basics of aeronautics, the airplane has been donated by the biggest airline in Colombia Avianca in the mid 80's Also the museum features a room with a small representation of a city's roads to teach children traffic signs and behaviour while driving or walking on the streets

External links

• Museo de los Niños de Bogotá