Pretend City The Childrens Museum Of Orange County   

Pretend City Children’s Museum believes young children build foundational skills through the power of play. Research shows that play is critical to the development of executive function, a set of foundational skills that are required for successfully navigating the world. These skills are built through experiences, starting in the first year of life. Pretend City Children’s Museum is a place for children to explore, experiment, play and foster creativity in a familiar and transferable learning environment. Through pretend play, the “city” environment is also designed to help children learn about the interconnectedness and diversity of the local community, understand the needs of others, and explore the wide array of potential professions to which one may aspire. Pretend City serves all cities in Orange County and is designed to serve children ages infant through 10 and their families. In summary: Children are born with an innate self-motivation to play. Self motivation is a more effective driver than external motivation in skill building. Pretend City is a compelling pretend play educational environment. The type of pretend play in which children innately engage in at Pretend City effectively builds executive function skills. The building of executive function is an essential precursor to developing academic and life skills and is the very foundation needed for higher-order thinking. These abilities are the core of successfully navigating in the world today, but these executive function skills do not just develop by themselves. They are built over time through experiences, starting as early as the first year of life, with more complex skills building on the simpler skills that came before.