Play Cafe Grand Opening

The Woodlands Children’s Museum will celebrate and introduced its new Play Café 👨🏻‍🍳👩🏻‍🍳 exhibit with a day of fun, food and special activities on Saturday, January 25.

The grand opening event featured recognition of the exhibit’s sponsors, including generous grants from Nordstrom Charitable Giving and Junior League of The Woodlands, as well as gifts from The Martineau Family and The Rieser Family Foundation.
“We are so grateful for the generosity of our partners,” Executive Director Angela Colton said.
“Their support offers families unlimited potential to learn and play together.
The Play Café will allow children to explore foods from different cultures, opening up wonderful opportunities for communication and interaction.”

The new Play Café, located in the museum’s market exhibit, is an ideal spot for children to engage in hands-on, imaginative play.
Guests can try a variety of international foods at the café throughout the year, beginning with Asian cuisine.
In the café, children can be introduced to foods that are common and unique to different cultures, try new recipes, assemble and “cook” foods, serve meals to guests and role play.

The Play Café features a countertop and seating, a food display case, food prep station, grill, serving dishes and utensils.
Children can also wear a chef hat and coat while preparing food in the café.

“The immersive experience in the Play Café matches well with our education objectives at the museum.
Young children can explore colors, shapes, and sizes by sorting food and matching ingredients to the recipe cards, while older children can role play as a chef, server, cashier, or customer.
It’s a wonderful opportunity for parent-child engagement,” stated Colton.

To complement the cultural focus of the new exhibit, the grand opening event also featured food tasting stations provided by Junior League of The Woodlands, and a “paper sushi” art project in The Muse.

Families also enjoyed a special Storybook Theatre presentation of The Prince’s Breakfast by Joanne Oppenheim, an award-winning children’s author with more than 50 books in her portfolio.
The rhyming story featured a prince who goes on a global adventure to find new foods he enjoys.