thursday next

Many of America's 300-plus children's museums, employing bigger and bolder settings, have been pulling out all the stops to pique the curiosity of their patrons to the point where they'll want to read books or perform on stage, exercise their muscles or get better acquainted with nature.
Over the last decade or two, they've been widening their net to make room for an ever younger, preschool crowd. At Strong, which almost doubled in size in 2006 but still pays homage to its roots as a cultural history museum, there's also a big push to attract more teenagers and preteens.
When the inhabitants are hard at play, squeals of delight echo all day through this city's cavernous child laboratory -- the nation's second-biggest after The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, Indiana. But peer around many corners, and studiousness prevails.
None other than Albert Einstein, after all, called play "the highest form of research."The shift toward accommodating toddlers and even crawlers largely paralleled a flurry of early childhood brain research affirming the social, intellectual and physical benefits of play.
"Play is really how children learn and that is their work as young children," said Janet Rice Elman, executive director of the Association of Children's Museums. "They learn best through touching, seeing, smelling, climbing, testing. They're also learning social skills, how to work with other children."