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First-Rate Fun Meets First-Rate Science with Over 70 Unique Hands-on Experiences

NEW YORK, NY, November 11, 2011 – The Children’s Museum of Manhattan (CMOM) announced today that its highly anticipated EatSleepPlay™: Building Health Every Day exhibition will open on Friday, November 11. This exciting, interactive experience allows children and their families to explore how and why food, sleep and physical activity work together to power the body and fuel the mind. The 3,500 square foot exhibit consists of a giant heart and such walk-through organs as the brain, stomach and intestines, making it a truly immersive environment.

Families are challenged to make lifestyle decisions in over 70 activity stations and experiences, ranging from innovative technology games in a 16-foot brain to a chattering stomach, intestines that need cleaning, calorie-burning contraptions and a giant produce cart complete with super-powered vegetables and fruit. By making the right decisions, kids can keep a 7-foot heart pumping, send energy to the brain and move through conveyor belts.

“The opening of EatSleepPlay™ is a testament to CMOM’s unique position to reach families from all backgrounds and provide them with the best information possible on making healthy choices for their children,” said Laurie M. Tisch, Honorary Chair of CMOM. “Our goal is for every family who visits the exhibit to make changes and decisions that lead to a healthy lifestyle.”

An advisory group of renowned public health officials and health professionals, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), guided the exhibit’s concepts and content. Such knowledge and medical insight has been interpreted and combined with CMOM’s proven arts-based educational techniques to provide an inspiring and engaging experience for families.

“Research shows that parents and caregivers are primary influences on children and youth. Delivering science-based information in unique, engaging, and fun ways, helps to reach and empower children and families to make healthy choices,” said Karen Donato, Acting Deputy Director, Division for the Application of Research Discoveries, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

“In producing EatSleepPlay™, CMOM drew upon its long history of working with families and knowing how they learn together,” said Andrew Ackerman, Executive Director of CMOM. “By targeting both adults and young children, the exhibit’s activities allow for learning, creative play and family discussion about their health and the consequences of their choices.”

The exhibit is composed of five thematic areas:

• Decision Center – Climb up a tongue, through the mouth and into a giant brain – the body’s whirring epicenter. Brain neuroscience is at the center of the EatSleepPlay™ exhibition – with a focus on decision making. Experience an animated, digital game created specifically for the exhibit by CMOM and Linda Gottfried of Color, Light and Shadow. Choices Change yOUR World! is a multiplayer game in which children make choices on a series of touch screen panels, learning the impact of everyday choices on their health and on the well being of their entire community. Or try your best to make healthy choices at breakneck speed at the Snibbe Social Table™ Health Choices tabletop, an interactive digital game where players grab virtual icons, competing with other players for the longest lifespan. Flip oversized switches to reveal hidden ingredients in various foods and compete to stop slick marketing messages from reaching the brain.

• Building Health – Enter the stomach and explore what happens to the food we eat. Act as the gastric gatekeeper to prevent a rush of food into an already full stomach. Crawl with your kids through glowing red intestines and release nutrients from healthy foods, while seeing how fiber cleans the intestine walls. A giant beating heart allows kids to experience how much harder it must work to pump blood through clogged arteries as opposed to healthy arteries. Additionally, in what is sure to be a high-traffic area, The Royal Flush, a talking toilet expounds on the many lessons the body’s waste can teach us.

• Eat – Vegetables have never been this much fun! Sell the freshest produce at an official NYC Green Cart, while using buckets, conveyor belts and chutes to sort the local harvest. Here you’ll meet the Super Sprowtz, a team of super-powered vegetable heroes who fight the forces of unhealthy habits. Dioramas, short videos, books and a scavenger hunt introduce Sammy Spinach, Colby Carrot and Erica Eggplant to children and bring the wonders of vegetables to life.

• Sleep – What’s the connection between sleep deprivation and obesity and other health issues? Informed by the latest medical research, EatSleepPlay™ is the first health exhibit for children to demonstrate the critical importance of adequate sleep on maintaining a healthy mind and body. Uncover all the maintenance work that happens while we sleep: skin heals, blood is cleaned, memories are stored, and hormones regulating growth and appetite are released! Challenge your memory with an interactive bedtime routine game. Discover how it feels to play a game of foosball as a member of both a well rested and sleep deprived team.

• Play – Work off your energy by getting active! Experience how having fun through play impacts physical, cognitive and emotional development. Parents and kids can create music together in a soundproof laser dance chamber. Guests can test their muscles and core strength while competing to stay balanced the longest. Finally, hop on Zikes, a hybrid of a bike, scooter and stair-stepper, and see how long it takes to burn the calories from one brownie!

• Before leaving the EatSleepPlay™ exhibit, families will be encouraged to select a goal that improves one aspect of their health. CMOM will follow up by providing support and encouragement to families through its public programs, online resources and opportunities to share their real life accomplishments.

“With its new EatSleepPlay™health initiative, CMOM will help children and their parents to make more informed decisions about eating and physical activity. By making learning fun, CMOM brings up-to-date science to the people in order to allow families to better protect their children’s health,” said Dr. Nicholas Freudenberg, Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York School of Public Health at Hunter College.

Visually dramatic, EatSleepPlay™: Building Health Every Day is designed by award winning artists May & Watkins Design, LLC in collaboration with CMOM staff.

The EatSleepPlay ™ exhibit is part of CMOM’s comprehensive national early childhood prevention obesity prevention initiative, created in concert with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and funded by the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, Institute for Museum and Library Services, a federal agency, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Goldman Sachs Gives, the United Way of New York City and the Joan Ganz Cooney Fund at the New York Community Trust.

Other components of the initiative include an arts-based curriculum produced in partnership with the NIH, family programs, professional development with Head Start, and original research. CMOM’s early childhood curriculum will become a government publication in partnership with the NIH We Can! (Ways to Enhance Children’s Activity & Nutrition)® initiative and will be available to all registered We Can! sites in addition to stakeholders nationwide. In addition, CMOM recently announced it will replicate its programs and exhibitions in literacy and health inside public housing in East Harlem, thanks to a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

About the Children’s Museum of Manhattan
Founded in 1973, the Children’s Museum of Manhattan is New York City’s leading cultural institution dedicated solely to children and families. CMOM inspires children and their families to learn about themselves and a culturally diverse world through unique interactive exhibitions. CMOM presents a full range of activities, exhibits and special performances that stimulate children of all ages. Through multidimensional programs that reach deep into the community, the Museum serves New Yorkers from all backgrounds. For details on all of CMOM’s programs, please visit www.cmom.org.