A healthy new exhibit has been born at Pacific Science Center, one with the gallant task of making health and wellness learning fun. From the squeals at the larger-than-life Sneeze Wall to the scrunched up noses at the Odor Decoder, I’d say this exhibit is a success.
Professor Wellbody’s Academy of Health & Wellness is a 7,000-square-foot, two-story exhibit about fitness, nutrition, sleep and hygiene. It’s all about personal choices, and goodness knows both kids and adults make important ones every day, including how much sleep we get and what we eat.
Wellbody Academy is the first permanent exhibit to open at the Science Center in 10 years. It is divided into seven themed sections, each with a central interactive game that will appeal to children. Younger kids will enjoy the tactile activities and older kids will be drawn to the touch-screen features interspersed throughout.
Activities in the Germazium were the most popular with my two kids, ages 6 and 8. The hot commodity (a.k.a. the Sneeze Wall) lives here. People must enter at their own risk, venturing as close as they dare to the “wet zone.” On a big screen, someone sneezes in slow motion while umpteen particles of spit fly about and, simultaneously, a water mister gets you from above.
Another Germazium hit with my kids was the hand-washing station, which uses a system designed to train hospital workers how to properly wash their hands. A camera captures your hand-cleaning gestures as you copy what’s happening on the computer screen, and then scores your skill. That was a learning experience for me, too, as I apparently didn’t know the right way to wash my hands. Around the corner, the Odor Decoder tortured our noses as we guessed at different types of bad breath – coffee and garlic included. Yuck. I think I might have named it Halitosis Hell instead.
We breezed through the Slumbertorium, where people learn if they get enough rest at night. A giant, mechanical sleep wheel – like the inside of Big Ben with all its gadgets and dials – talks out loud about the different stages of sleep. The kids were also in and out of The Studio, although adults may like to take some time there to learn about health-related research being done in our community. There are several places in the Wellbody exhibit where local personalities and work are profiled, which I appreciate.
My 8-year-old son loved the touch screen “Barrier Feud” in Wellbody Hall, which offers multiple choice questions on fitness, nutrition and sleep. He also enjoyed the Apple-a-Day video game, not unlike a slot machine, where you match up nutrition and food information to get a winner.
My 6-year-old daughter loved manipulating the “food” on the conveyor belt in Cafedium. While she was more interested in organizing them as they went by, kids with more patience can plug the food items into a scanner to learn about their nutrition. The bigger challenge here is to build a day’s worth of healthy, balanced meals. This activity takes some time, and you might have to wait for a computer.
The upstairs Loft deals with aging well and not aging well. The hands-down best thing for kids in this section is the computer program that shows you what you might look like at age 80 if you smoke or are obese. (Yikes! No one needs to see that, but the kids sure thought their results were funny.)
On the opening weekend of the exhibit, there were still some kinks being worked out. The main activity in the Playdium, Loft-a-Palooza, where you produce energy through “butt bouncing,” was down. My son would have loved that. In addition, we had trouble hearing some of the audio on the videos.
By the end of our visit, my daughter was a pro at washing her hands correctly. When I asked her what she would remember about the exhibit she said matter-of-factly, “We should not sneeze on people.” My son, who loves a good physical challenge, talked about the task of burning calories (which he did that day on a stationery bike). Not too bad for takeaways, I’d say.
This exhibit doesn’t take much more than an hour, so you’ll have time to visit all of the places your kids enjoy at Pacific Science Center. Do make the stop though, to remind yourselves of the small choices we make every day that add to our health and wellness.
