Two Pocatello museums to celebrate grand reopening with event for kids
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POCATELLO — A new event will be held to celebrate the coming together of two local museums, shutting down a street and filling it up with “trucks and vehicles of all different shapes and sizes.”
For Touch A Truck, South Second Avenue in front of the Clean World Campus will be closed off to traffic as kids get an up-close experience with work trucks parked along the street and learn more about their functions and importance. This event will take place on Tuesday, June 4, from 4 to 7 p.m. to celebrate My World Discovery Museum joining the Museum of Clean on the Clean World Campus.
“We’ve been talking about it for three or four years, so to see it happening, we’re so excited,” said Melody Daniels, My World Discovery’s executive director.
The idea for Touch A Truck started when Daniels co-founded the My World Discovery Museum in the Pine Ridge Mall. She wanted to hold an event like this for the kids who went to her children’s museum, but she didn’t have the means to.
Daniels spent her childhood on a dairy farm in a small Idaho town and was exposed to large tractors and “all kinds of equipment.” When her children were little, she would take them to their grandparents’ house and see how fascinated they were with the vehicles.
“They would get the same exposure, and they were just fascinated by it,” Daniels said.
When the two museums decided to come under the same roof, the idea for this event entered the conversation.
“We decided that this would be an awesome, not only event for our community, but for both museums as we come together and have our grand opening to celebrate this union between the two museums,” said Samantha Stoddard, the Museum of Clean’s executive marketing director.
The ribbon cutting, marking when My World officially moves onto the Clean World campus, will be held earlier in the day at noon.
Once the late afternoon rolls around and the street fills up with a variety of work trucks, children will have the chance to see these vehicles up close and play in them.
“The idea is to give our youth and children here in our community and in the region… that hands-on experience,” Stoddard said.
Just some of the types of trucks that will be there will be a fire engine, police car, sanitation truck, tractors and even a street sweeper. Many of these vehicles are used to perform essential city functions, and children will get the opportunity to learn how they work.
“It fits so well into what we’re already doing as far as helping kids learn about the world around them,” Daniels said.
There will also be food trucks parked on the Clean World Campus parking lot, including Wild Noodles and the Corndog Company.
Because of this, there will be no parking available on South 2nd Avenue or in the parking lot. Attendees will have to find parking on the side streets along the road.
Stoddard said an event like Touch A Truck is where a child learns best, and My World Discovery Museum has always been focused on providing hands-on education.
“Children learn through touching and seeing and exploring things,” Stoddard said.
Stoddard said that having this event helps the Museum of Clean enhance children’s understanding of the value of cleanliness, particularly with the street sweeper and sanitation trucks.
“Our region needs this, these opportunities for our kids and community members to just band together and support each other so that we can provide more opportunities in the future is a huge reason to come and support this,” Stoddard said.