![]() It has been ailing since the real estate boom glutted Washington area shopping. White Flint is no longer positioned as an elite fashion center. ![]() Pei, the architect who created the new wing of the Louvre. Magnin department store that had been designed by I.M. But this spring, a new FunCenter opened in Rockville's White Flint Mall, occupying 13,500 square feet of the closed I. ![]() Smaller Discovery Zones had opened in the past two years in Germantown, Falls Church and Annapolis. Now, after years of blissful innocence, the Washington area is getting Zoned-out. By the end of last year there were more than 165 nationwide. The Discovery Zone vision of childhood made cleaner than mud pies, safer than tree swings and less competitive than hopscotch sprang to life in 1989, when the first FunCenter opened in Kansas City. Welcome to the bold new world of "pay for play," coming soon to a shopping center near you. "When I was a child, you only played outside or at a friend's house," she says. As she looks through the glass for the face of her son, sweetly flushed with excitement, a small frown tugs at the corners of her mouth. She pauses, thinking of those Ozzie and Harriet days of her youth - coming home from a bike ride at dusk, from the beach with shorts full of sand or from the playground with palms rubbed raw by the jungle gym. There is no way someone could run off with your child."Īsked how her childhood in balmy Southern California would have been different if there were Discovery Zones back then, Boxwell hesitates not a moment before saying she wishes there had been. I think it's wonderful," says Ramona Boxwell, 42, who, along with her 7-year-old son, David, is a biweekly regular at what the culturally clued-in simply call "the Zone." "I like this. If they wish, they can pay extra and leave their kids feasting on amusement while they shop or run errands. For a two-hour admission price of $5.99, parents can supervise their children from inside the "Quiet Zone," a sound-quilted fortress with such grown-up toys as a pay phone. Like so many Oompa Loompas, young boys and girls frolic in pools of Jujube-colored balls, or clamber over Slurpee-blue foam mountains.īut unlike Wonka's fictional chocolate factory, this futuristic FunCenter manufactures a product appealing to those stress-coated confections with soft centers of guilt: modern parents. Every failed experiment provides a platform for new learning.The indoor plastic playground known as the Discovery Zone looks as if it were designed by candy kingpin Willy Wonka. Each time a child performs the action, s/he is making predictions about what will happen next. They repeat task to practice and eventually master a skill. …being patient as children repeat tasks over and over and over again. Listen to children’s use of language as they describe observations, changes they are making, and predictions of expected outcomes.Playing with mirrors provides opportunities to investigate reflection, angles, symmetry, and geometry, all with a touch of artistic flair.Notice that at some times one or two children might work on the wall to build individual ball runs and at other times several children may join together to work on a larger collaborative effort.This is a very active exhibit that requires a lot of creative problem solving. Through much trial and error, children design intricate ball runs that work to their great satisfaction. Not only are children utilizing the force of magnetism as they arrange and rearrange the tubes and ball run elements, but they are also predicting how the ball will travel through a series of tubes.Through trial and error, children are testing which materials and designs fly better, faster, slower – much the same as a scientist. When playing with the flight lab and experimenting with different kinds of materials, children are exploring the effects of moving air on objects in its pathway.
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