Emerging children’s museum Heart of Play is bringing play-based learning to children and families across Whatcom County
Tension grew between the young girl’s brows. It still wasn’t working. As she and a young boy made small adjustments to the large, green, tinker-toy-like blocks at the annual Allied Arts Children’s Art Walk on May 1, the gears in her mind turned. Closer, but still something was off. Another shift of the ramp, and that was it. The small green foam ball soared down the ramp, whipped around a 90-degree turn and launched through the tunnel. A smile spread across her face as her arms flew into the air in celebration.
This is play-based learning. This is what Whatcom County children’s museum, Heart of Play, is all about.
Heart of Play founder Nina Ballew’s vision for a children’s museum began with her son, Harry. What started as an effort to help him navigate sensory processing challenges eventually grew into a much bigger goal: creating a large-scale children’s museum in Whatcom County for children of all ages and abilities. During the pandemic, Ballew and her family regularly drove up and down the Interstate 5 corridor so Harry could access the interactive, hands-on learning spaces offered by children’s museums in Seattle, Everett and Vancouver, B.C. As many of those museums closed during the pandemic, it became increasingly clear that Whatcom County lacked anything comparable.
A few years later, after transitioning from the Bellingham School District to a teaching position in Ferndale, Ballew became even more aware of how quickly family resources thin out beyond Bellingham. Families in northern and eastern Whatcom County were often making the same drives she did to access services, programs and play spaces for their children.
“They need a community space to play, to learn, to grow together, to not grow out of something, but to grow up through something,” Ballew said.
After establishing the need and the location, Ballew decided to create the space that her family and so many others were looking for. In August 2024, that dream officially became Heart of Play.
Dreaming the museum
Providing access to play has been central to HOP’s mission since its inception. While the nonprofit organization fundraises for a mobile sprinter van museum and works toward opening a permanent location, it currently partners with local organizations to host pop-up museums at community events across Whatcom County. Although HOP participates in events in Bellingham, communities in northern Whatcom County, including Ferndale and Lynden, remain a major focus due to the lack of large-scale play-based learning spaces.
That need for more local resources has been reflected in HOP’s “Dream the Museum” board, a tall rainbow fishnet displayed at pop-up events where families are invited to share ideas for the future museum. Children pin notes with responses describing what they would want to play with and who they would bring, while parents and caregivers consider questions such as how far they would be willing to drive to access a children’s museum. According to Eric Chambers, vice president of HOP and founder of the Children’s Museum of Skagit County, a common sentiment is that families want children’s museums in their own communities.
Chambers said his experience starting the Children’s Museum of Skagit County stemmed from similar goals to Ballew’s: filling a gap in the community. Before the museum opened in 2003, he frequently drove down to Snohomish, Seattle or Portland, Oregon, so his own children could access hands-on learning spaces.
While transportation is often framed as the primary barrier for families trying to access children’s museums, Chambers said the issue extends beyond simply getting families from one place to another.
“I think really, it’s not transportation,” Chambers said. “It’s that we locate our services in the wrong place. So what we’re doing is trying to locate our programs in areas where communities are already naturally gathered. That’s not always just Bellingham.”
Chuckanut Health Foundation Special Projects Coordinator Kristina Michele Martens has also noticed this service gap. In her work leading the Mount Baker Health Equity Zone project, Martens has identified a lack of spaces for children in eastern Whatcom County to gather, play and engage in hands-on learning.
“The Mt. Baker School District covers 600 square miles of rural terrain, and what we heard consistently through our HEZ community engagement was that families — especially those with young children — feel the absence of safe, welcoming, enriching spaces to gather and play,” Martens wrote in an email.
Martens said she is grateful for the work libraries and schools do to help fill that need, but the region still lacks a children’s museum or year-round space specifically designed for young children to play and learn.
“There is very little that is specifically designed to spark curiosity and learning for young children in an accessible, year-round way,” Martens wrote. “When you add transportation barriers on top of that, families who cannot easily get to Bellingham are essentially left without options.”
Martens believes that resources like HOP, which address the location and transportation barriers for so many families, could be monumental in creating accessible play spaces.
“I think something like Heart of Play, if it can reach into rural communities through mobile programming or partnerships, could be genuinely transformative for this area,” Martens wrote.
While Bellingham lacks a large-scale children’s museum, it does have the Whatcom Museum Family Interactive Gallery, which is also focused on play-based learning.
“Play-based learning has long been regarded as one of the most important ways children learn and grow because it helps foster creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving,” Kim Wulfestieg, director of education at the FIG, wrote in an email. “We’re glad to be one of the options available for Whatcom County families.”
As HOP plans for its future museum, Ballew hopes to complement existing resources like the FIG and work towards creating a large-scale museum comparable to those in Tacoma and Seattle, accessible and bringing play to families across Whatcom County.
Play as a means to build brains and belonging
At each of its events, HOP tailors its activities to the age group it is interacting with, whether it be toddlers or teens. HOP Museum Educator Lindsey Snyder, who holds a PhD in museum education, said the organization centers activities on provoking curiosity and inviting children to explore through hands-on interaction rather than one-size-fits-all learning.
“When kids are engaging with objects, it’s an invitation into a playground for your learning experience,” Snyder said.
Snyder and Ballew acknowledged that not everyone immediately views play as a meaningful form of learning. Ballew encourages people to reflect on moments when they felt a strong sense of belonging while learning something new. More often than not, she said, those experiences involve some kind of immersive, hands-on interaction.
Snyder recalled watching an 18-month-old interact with balls and tubes at a HOP pop-up event. After just a few tries of testing different-sized balls in the tube, the child began intentionally selecting only the smaller balls that would fit.
For Snyder, moments like these demonstrate how play-based learning can help children develop problem-solving and observational skills long before they can even speak. This is consistent with an American Academy of Pediatrics study, which links play to improved executive functioning, social development, peer relations and an enhanced sense of agency.
That emphasis on connection and development is part of what drew Rep. Alicia Rule, who represents Washington’s 42nd Legislative District and serves as the vice chair of the Early Learning & Human Services Committee, to become a Founding Family of HOP.
“Investing upstream in children’s development, social-emotional health and family connection is critical for our communities,” Rule wrote in an email. “A children’s museum is not just entertainment; it’s a place where kids build confidence, problem-solving skills, imagination and relationships in a hands-on environment that supports healthy development.”
Rule said there’s a need for resources such as HOP in north Whatcom County communities that are experiencing population growth but lacking comparable family-centered resources.
“We don’t have anything like this in the north County, and we see families moving there in increasing numbers, in part due to the affordability,” she wrote. “From Lummi Nation to Sumas and everywhere in between, a children’s museum is a natural connector for families too — and we could certainly use more connection in these times.”
To Ballew, fostering connection and hands-on learning is becoming increasingly important with the influx of the “anxious generation.”
“We’re losing connection, which at the heart of humanity, is what kids need to be, strong, active, positively contributing citizens,” Ballew said. “This is a long game. Play builds brains, builds belonging, builds connection. It builds pro-social skills so that kids know how to engage with one another in a positive, safe way.”
For Ballew, the solution is clear.
“This isn’t a question of if we need one. We do need one,” Ballew said. “Every community needs an organization like this that highlights the need for play.”
As schools continue facing budget pressures and resource shortages, Ballew said she hopes HOP can complement what children are learning in the classroom.
“We know that those cuts to schools are so deep and are so pervasive, and so now it lights a fire under us to work harder,” she said.
Creating a place where everyone belongs
At the HOP pop-up at Allied Arts, community members were invited to share the brush with Coast Salish artist Jason LaClair to paint a mural that will hang in the entrance of the future museum.
Titled “A Place Where Everyone Belongs,” the mural centers around a longhouse, representing intergenerational and communal learning. Surrounding it are several Salish beings, including a frog, thunderbird, whale and blue jay, each of which plays a role in protecting the space of learning, LaClair said. Together, the mural reflects the idea that children and families thrive when supported by community, nature and shared responsibility.
As kids walked up to the canvas, HOP board members and LaClair were often heard saying, “Are you ready to make your mark on the mural?” For Ballew, the phrase reflected one of HOP’s core values: creating a museum that is rooted in place and shaped by the families and communities it hopes to serve across Whatcom County.
For LaClair, the mural also became a way to foster connection between community members. He said those opportunities for human connection are increasingly important to combat isolation and help guide children as they grow into the next generation of decision-makers.
The mural was unveiled at the Indigenous Art Festival on June 5, then will rotate around the community until it finds its permanent home in the HOP brick-and-mortar museum. Until then, Ballew is holding on to the memory of the children lining up to share the paintbrush with LaClair. She hopes that when the permanent museum eventually opens, those same children will walk through the doors, recognize the mural and know they were part of creating the space.
“I’m really hoping that it’s a core memory for them,” Ballew said. “That when they walk into Heart of Play, in however many years, they know that they were part of it.”
A smile crept across Ballew’s face as she let out a soft sigh and said, “I can see it.”
—By Sophie Cadran