After a national review of exemplary children’s museum efforts conducted by Metlife Foundation and Association of Children’s Museum, the KidZone Museum, a nonprofit children’s museum in Truckee, was one of the three museums to receive top honors and a $10,000 cash award.

The educational experiences at the KidZone Museum are highly interactive, creating a place where children can explore, discover and learn through play.

To earn a Promising Practice Award a children’s museum must stand out as innovating and redefining traditional museums where play is highly interactive. Museums are competitively evaluated among a jury of experts in museum design and programming.

The KidZone Museum received its Promising Practice award for the KidsReach program, which increased visitation to the Museum from low-income children and families by 500 percent in three years.

The other two museums that received top honors were the Stepping Stones Museum for Children (Norwalk, Conn.) and DuPage Children’s Museum (Naperville, Ill). Three Promising Practice Honorable Mentions included: Treehouse Museum (Ogden, Utah), Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh and the Bay Area Discovery Museum (Sausalito).

The KidZone Museum’s current exhibit, Starfish Enterprise, features an Imagination Playground “reef” building, a research submarine, reading nook and sand play.

For additional information, go online. The Museum is dedicated to and designed for families with children up to age 7. Exhibits change periodically and focus on sparking a child’s curiosity.