Our Town - Main Street

Adults go to work every day in a town, and at the Greensboro Children’s Museum, children go to their work in “Our Town”. The Museum offers realistic exhibits placed along the Main Street that give children the chance to learn through "make believe" play with their parents and caregivers. Here, children can become a sales clerk or a grocery shopper in our newly renovated Market, they can set the table for Sunday dinner at Nonie's House, be a dentist and check patient’s teeth for cavities, pilot a DC-9 jet or be a firemen or policemen and keep our community safe.  Bring your child and play with us on in Our Town!

The Market

The Market exhibit, made possible by the generous donation of The Fresh Market, is complete with a variety of departments like you would find in a real grocery store including produce, bakery, seafood and meat.  The exhibit has real wood fixtures, canopies, grocery shelving, and working registers kids can ring up the food on. Children can have a great time shopping in the store with their parents, pushing kid-sized carts around, selecting healthy foods from the stocked shelves and getting new wholesome recipes to prepare for dinner! 

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Pizza Pan

In the space formerly called The Main Street Cafe, the Pizza Pan is GCM’s new little restaurant that serves up delicious pizza pies and has a cool brick oven!  Children can become pizza chefs, pulling the pizzas out of the "oven" and then they can delivering them to the stores and houses around Main Street.

This exhibit was made possible by the generous donation of the High Five Club.

The Theater

All the world is a stage, and this theater is sized just right for children to set their imaginations free. Complete with a light and sound booth, fun costumes and props, it is sure to inspire thespians of all ages.

Tot Spot/Play Lot

Our early childhood gallery is the center of it all! This cozy, safe area is for children 4 and under and filled with stimulating, hands-on learning through play exhibits. Children under 2 years of age have their own padded area called Tot Spot with mirrors to make faces, brightly colored items to grab and manipulate, and soft textures to experiment with sitting up, rolling over or reaching those toes for the first time. Older toddlers and preschoolers can enjoy Play Lot with a firehouse playhouse, match outfits and uniforms on our career columns, take a spin on a cozy coupe racetrack or fly a miniature airplane!

Our Town Doctor’s Office/Dentist's Office
The doctor is always in! This exhibit features x-rays, an examination table with stethoscopes, scrubs children can wear and interactive play stations that teach them about their bodies. Don't forget to stop by the dentist's chair. You can brush humongous teeth with a mega toothbrush or just check out your own smile.

Construction Zone

What does your house look like behind the walls? Probably a lot like ours.

Children can learn how homes are framed, wired, insulated and finished in this half-built house. Down in the basement, we’ve got soft foam blocks for their own creations, or PVC pipes to practice their plumbing skills.

Nonie’s House

Time stands still in our grandmother’s house. It’s the 1930’s, when most kitchens didn't’t have dishwashers, or even refrigerators. What else is missing from Nonie’s House? Well, just a TV set, but watch imaginations bloom as children cook, clean and play house here.

Creation Station
Children use recycled materials and art supplies to create amazing masterpieces. Please help us by saving and then donating recycled items and creative materials (see our Wish List under the Support Tab for a list of items we always need).  Painting occurs on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays & Sundays.

Media Room
And now… breaking news from GCM! Children host their own newscasts in this exhibit while they learn about how a TV studio works. They can be an anchor, meteorologist, or a reporter on location using our green-screen! A radio booth in this area lets them experiment with sounds and microphones for imaginative fun.

Get Out and Play
Use your imagination and your muscles! This exhibit brings your favorite outdoor games inside where the weather isn’t a factor. You can scramble inside a tree house, defy gravity on our rock climbing wall, test your balance and play some fun, physical games.

Big Bubble Springs
This popular area is packed with bubble activities, bubble juice and bubble wands. Does a square wand make a square bubble? Watch your children explore and imagine while they’re fascinated with all the bubbles they can make.

Transportation Gallery

Board a real DC-9 jet for an adventure high above GCM! Children can “pilot” the plane and exit down a slide. Squeeze into the driver’s seat of a Petty Enterprises Hot Wheels NASCAR Pontiac and challenge the field to a race. Climb into real turnout gear and “race” to the scene of a fire in our real fire truck. Flip on the lights and sirens and you’re after the “bad guys” from behind the wheel of

our real police car.

Lighthouse and Sandbox
Enjoy a day at the beach without the drive. A huge sandbox beckons, and there’s buried treasure underneath all the glistening grains. Children use their imaginations and their motor skills here. Our replica of the Cape Hatteras lighthouse is the centerpiece of this exhibit and you can “sail” there in a perfectly-proportioned sailboat.

Trains

Children are the conductors of the GCM railroads. Our new train tables are filled with movable trains children can push around the tracks and make believe they are in charge! It's “all aboard!” for fun and imaginative play in this exhibit!

Learning Garden
Green thumbs for everyone! This garden grows vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini and squash, herbs like basil, rosemary and chives, flowers like sunflowers and zinnias, and North Carolina traditional crops like cotton, peanuts, sweet potatoes and pumpkins. Children do the planting and the harvesting. Some of the produce grown in this garden becomes the basis of a recipe in a Kitchen Fun or other GCM program!

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