It contains many activities meant to both amuse and educate young children.HistoryEarly yearsThe idea for a children’s museum in Boston developed in 1909 when several local science teachers founded the Science Teacher’s Bureau. One of the Bureau’s main goals was to create a museum:"it is planned to inaugurate at the same place, a Museum, local in its nature and to contain besides the natural objects, books, pictures, charts, lantern slides, etc., whatever else is helpful in the science work of the Grammar, High and Normal Schools. The specimens are to be attractively arranged and classified and the room open daily to children or anyone interested in such work."The Women’s Education Association also helped the Science Teacher’s Bureau with the planning for the children’s museum in Boston. After four years of planning, The Children’s Museum officially opened on August 1, 1913, at the Pinebank Mansion located along Jamaica Pond in Olmsted Park in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood. It is the second oldest children's museum in the United States. The first museum contained two cases: one devoted to birds and the other to minerals and shells. The exhibits were kept at children’s eye level, used simple language, and complemented the lessons taught in school. George Hunt Barton served as the museum’s first president.
