Farewell and Anticipation

Home \ Opal School Blog \ Farewell and Anticipation

There are
exciting things happening at the Portland Children's
Museum and the Opal School this spring. The Museum will begin to break
ground on their new exhibit, The Outdoor Adventure! With help
from Meyer Memorial Trust Grant, the Portland Children's Museum will transform 1.3 acres of
land into an outdoor exhibit where children and families
can play and explore.

The
Outdoor Exhibit will be a space for children and their families to play outside
and participate in activities and programs that connect them to the Oregon
environment. The design for the exhibit consists of eight ADA accessible
year-round environments that take advantage of the natural landscape to connect
children to nature.

It is going to
be an amazing space and everyone in the Opal Museum School community is looking
forward to this new addition to the museum. But in order to make way
for this new and innovative space, last week we had to say goodbye to one of our most beloved spaces to play, The Rocky Space. The Rocky Space has played
a special part in outdoor exploration and fun for Opal students
since the school's first year. With its wide open spaces, climbing rocks
and, of course, Zoom (a favorite climbing tree), the Rocky Space has been a
well-loved and favorite space.

Construction
workers and architects will move in soon; therefore, the space had to be closed
down and the school and the children will no longer have access to play on it
during our outside times for the rest of the school year. This was sad
news for the children, but they took an optimistic view by coming up with ways to sincerely say goodbye to the Rocky Space, as well as eagerly anticipating the Outdoor Adventure
that will take its place! On the last day before Spring Break, we had a
celebration in the Rocky Space as a way to say good-bye. The children
said goodbye by capturing their favorite spaces through
photographs….