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DeeDee Watkins babysits her three-year-old granddaughter Whinley when Whinley’s parents are working. She takes her to KidSenses Children’s Interactive Museum in downtown Rutherfordton two to three times a week.

“She just loves it. She begs to come here,” says Watkins. “Every day I get her, she’s like, ‘Are we going to KidSenses? Are we going to KidSenses?’ She just loves it here.”

The museum is in an 11,000-square-foot building with 14 exhibit spaces, all with interactive features. It also has a 7,500-square-foot garden that’s open to children seasonally.

“We have all kinds of things here,” says Mandi Williams, the museum’s deputy director. “There’s something new almost every time you come in.”

The museum has miniature replicas of real-life places, such as a grocery store, a café, a veterinary clinic, and even a television newsroom. There are also places to play with gears, gadgets, magnets, bubbles, puppets, and spaces just for children to create.

“Basically, learning through play,” says Williams. “Learning is the work of childhood. We all like to think that play is for fun, and that’s it, but actually, it’s one of the critical milestones. We want children to learn and be happy to learn about their environment, the world they live in, culture, life, a little bit of everything.”

The centerpiece exhibit is a real 1950s LeFrance fire truck.

“The kids love to go in there, ring the bell, do the alarm, make the lights go off, and dress up. That is definitely a hit,” says Williams.

Williams says that physical interactivity is important to the learning process.

“Kids learn less from being told something versus experiencing something and linking that to a positive memory, a positive experience,” says Williams. “We have toddlers who use our grocery carts to learn how to walk in these spaces. They’re learning how to hold things properly when they play with our magnets or hold our markers. There’s a lot of early development that’s critical and it’s physical.”

The museum has a classroom space to host curriculum-based workshops for field trip groups focusing on STEAM education, which stands for science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. Elementary schools in the area bring students to the museum to participate in those programs. 

The museum also participates in the international “maker” movement with programs that help children develop the hard and soft skills they’ll need later in the workforce. 

“They’re hands-on like everything else we do, but they require building,” says Williams. “They build the foundational blocks for growing up, learning what life is really like and what it takes to live the way that we do.”

The museum also hosts summer camps for kids from kindergarten through fifth grade. 

KidSenses Children’s Interactive Museum began as the dream of a local parent who visited a children’s museum while on vacation with her young daughter and, after returning, encouraged town leaders to include a children’s museum in their downtown revitalization plans in 2001. The town eyed a vacant 1927 building that had been a car dealership and later a “Five and Dime.”

“And we said, this is perfect. This is downtown. It’s big. Let’s do it,” says Williams. 

Three years and $2.5 million later, KidSenses opened in 2004. It has hosted over half a million visitors from all over.

“Anybody who finds themselves wanting to see the mountains, enjoy a little small town and play, they come see us,” says Williams. “As long as you want to pretend play, we’re the spot for you.”

The museum currently serves children under ten, but it’s working on expanding to serve children aged eleven and up. Williams says educational programs are for a very different age group and require a different kind of museum facility to engage them. The new 5,000-square-foot addition will be called The Factory. It’ll be a place where youth can meet friends, ask questions, share ideas, make things, and pursue their passions. The museum says that what those children make and do will not only reflect their own personal interests but will also provide connections to their future aspirations in the world of work. Increasingly, jobs are requiring STEM education to align with the demands of a new economy. The Factory will be designed to provide children the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and develop the skills necessary to succeed in the future.

In the meantime, work is probably the last thing on the minds of children who visit the museum. While there may be important learning going on, they just want to have fun. 

“We just want them to find a good place to be themselves, get some energy out and make some good family memories,” says Williams.

That’s what KidSenses Children’s Interactive Museum has been for Whinley and her grandmother. 

“I think this is a great thing that they have here for the kids to come here,” says Watkins. “I mean, this is just a wonderful place to come because they just learn so much.”

The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. To learn more, visit kidsenses.org.