Think back over your last few months of spending. What were the big-ticket items or experiences that you purchased for your child? If you were to judge yourself on where you invested dollars on their behalf, what would those expenses say about your priorities?
Sports, travel, and clothing topped my list of spending for my daughter this summer. She moved to a new soccer team, which required buying all-new everything: socks, shorts, four different jerseys, a backpack, outer gear for all weather, and the list goes on and on. As luck would have it, the one thing the team didn’t require—new footwear—made its way into our shopping cart anyway, because her old cleats no longer fit.
I’m talking hundreds and hundreds of dollars, far more than I spent on education during the same time frame. Do I value soccer over education? No. Does my spending look like it? Yes.
While there’s not an exact correlation between what we spend and what we value, I do believe that our visible spending sends kids strong messages about our priorities. How we spend says more than we intend.
Reading on the Road
So to tip the scales a bit in reading’s favor, I decided to put a lit-rich trip into the mix. If we can travel to Missouri and Arizona for soccer, I thought, why not go to our nation’s capital for reading? The Planet Word Museum and the National Book Festival had long topped my list of literary destinations to check out, so I brought my mom and my daughter along to make a weekend of it.
The Planet Word Museum was well worth the time and travel. Educator and philanthropist Ann Friedman’s founding vision for transforming the historic building has been beautifully realized, down to minute details like language symbols embedded in flooring and elevator interiors that look like library shelves. Every inch of the space exudes intention and enthusiasm for the human experience of language.
Most remarkable for a museum dedicated to words, it resists the urge to overwhelm visitors with print. It offers immersive, sensory, memorable experiences with language, using movement, light, and sound to capture visitors’ attention. It leaves space for guests to create our own meaning from what we consume, versus having it spoon-fed to us through the long placard descriptions typical of museums.
Everything at Planet Word is engaging, but here are a few of our favorites to give you a taste of the experience.
Global Voices
In your excitement to enter the museum, don’t miss the courtyard’s gorgeous, interactive art. Experiential and evocative, a towering aluminum sculpture, called Speaking Willow by visual artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, commands the space. Ivy creeps up its trunk and bell-shaped LED lights and speakers dangle from its branches.
When visitors pass under, it murmurs words from 364 different languages, representing the languages spoken by more than 99% of the world’s people. The speech —general statements about the various languages and cultures represented—isn’t meant to be parsed. Rather, let the words wash over you and inspire your sense of wonder at the richness, diversity, and interconnectedness of human communication.
Iconic Idioms
The Joking Around exhibit gives visitors a shot at shouting out iconic idioms—if you can take a visual hint from the provided props. We caught on to some pretty quickly, like “in a pickle” and “two peas in a pod,” but others left us stumped… to this day. Go ahead, have at these word puzzles. Then visit Planet Word for more. This light-hearted, interactive exhibit gets kids (and adults) thinking about the playfulness and creativity of figurative language.
The Word Wall of All Word Walls
Kids may be familiar with classroom word walls, filled with high-frequency words or lesson-specific vocab. This is not that. Planet Word’s 22-foot-tall talking word wall tells the story of the English language, through video and illuminated words. Visitors play a role, too, using microphones to interact with the exhibit and help shape the narrative.
Native Speakers
The Spoken World exhibit showcases iPads arrayed around a globe of lights. The screens offer mini-lessons in languages from Icelandic to Wolof, which highlight the diversity of world languages for us, as well as the universality of communicating culture and community. We loved the chance to practice words in unfamiliar tongues and ponder the heritage and identities of the speakers, as well as our own.
Gifts of Gab
I love a good gift shop, and Present Perfect at Planet Word had it all—bookish socks, pins, puzzles, games, and even dishes digging into tricky words like they’re, their, and there. There were books for word nerds of all ages, from Spelling Bee savant Zaila Avant-Garde’s Words of Wonder from Z to A picture book to Joe Gillard’s The Little Book of Lost Words: Collywobbles, Snollygosters, and 86 Other Surprisingly Useful Terms Worth Resurrecting. If you’re on the hunt for a baby shower gift, I recommend this adorable onesie. It pairs perfectly with my book, Reading for Our Lives.
We tapped out after two hours at the museum, which means there’s still much, much more to explore. On our next visit, we’ll be sure to dine at Immigrant Food, tackle a word-puzzle case in Lexicon Lane, and dig into the “I’m Sold” advertising exhibit. And I’m sure we’ll pick up a few more SAT words in the photo booth, sponsored by the College Board.
Long story, short. We loved it. Five stars. We’re sold on the idea that Planet Word truly is “the museum where language comes alive.”
