PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 Philadelphia\u2019s Please Touch Museum has officially kicked off the birthday festivities for its 50th anniversary this weekend, celebrating five decades of inspiring curiosity.<\/p>\n
The children\u2019s museum was founded in 1976 by Montessori school teacher Portia Sperr, who set out to recreate real-world environments where kids could play, explore, and learn through touch: fake food bought with fake money at fake grocery stores by real children who will one day have to navigate those places by themselves.<\/p>\n
Parents like Anastasia Blake, who grew up going there, say the Please Touch Museum\u2019s mission is as important as ever.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt does so much for their overall development, their motor skills,\u201d Blake said. \u201cIt really is a one-stop shop.\u201d<\/p>\n
Georgia Schuster, another parent, says her kids can\u2019t get enough of the museum.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, my son, we had to pry him from the upstairs transportation room,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd then Whitney is a big fan of designing cupcakes and baking, so she went and made me a nice meal in the kitchen area.\u201d <\/p>\n
But with smartphones, video games and artificial intelligence, the world has changed a lot since 1976. <\/p>\n
Kristina Haye, senior manager of museum events at Please Touch, says the museum\u2019s goal for the future is to find balance.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re connecting with a new generation, but also maintaining our mission,\u201d Haye said. \u201cWhen we get older, we have to learn how to maneuver through the world just by exploring and going out and not having that TV or technology guide us through.\u201d <\/p>\n
50th anniversary celebrations take place Saturday and Sunday 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tickets are sold out, but the museum says they are taking walk-ins as they are able.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 Philadelphia\u2019s Please Touch Museum has officially kicked off the birthday festivities for its 50th…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[18643,2359,497,69,71,70,21997],"class_list":["post-299268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-50th-anniversary","tag-celebration","tag-learning","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-please-touch-museum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}