Every town in Connecticut has a playscape. But only one has a playscape designed to look like a gastrointestinal tract, with children climbing in the mouth, down the throat slide, into the stomach, through the intestine tube, and spilling out onto a mushy brown pad at the end.
That playscape is the center of the Connecticut Science Center’s new exhibit, “Grossology,” a kid-focused study of all the disgusting things a human body has to do to keep going: peeing, pooping, farting, belching, sneezing, snot-running, stomach-gurgling, etc.
Visitors are welcomed to the exhibit hall by an animated character, Her Grossness, who is surrounded by books with titles such as “To Pee or Not to Pee,” “The Ins and Outs of the Digestive System” and “The True Story of Mucus.”
“Everybody’s bodies make gross stuff. If you didn’t do this, you’d be pushing up daisies,” is her greeting.
After that introduction, the icky but entertainingly educational show is set up like an amusement arcade. “Urine: The Game” is a Wii-style screen game that has kids pretending to be kidneys, slapping spinning elements into the proper tract: sugars and white and red cells go into the veins to nourish the body; and potassium, sodium, urea and water go to the urethra, to make pee.
The sneeze game is a shooting gallery. Kids shoot little white balls into two nostrils — the balls are supposed to represent pollen and other sneeze-producing agents — and the balls eventually are spewed out again as a sneeze. An old-fashioned pinball game called Gas Attack racks up points based on how much gas certain foods produce. It sits next to a plastic pig sitting on a plastic mountain of poop.
A climbing wall is made to resemble skin, with blisters, warts, scabs and pimples to grab onto. The bacteria display asks visitors to sniff a body odor and identify whether it came from a mouth, an armpit, a foot or an anus.
Nigel Nose-It-All, the animated character teaching about mucus, is shaped like a faucet with a snot bubble dripping out of it.
“The exhibit reminds me of when my oldest daughter was born. When they were carrying her over to get weighed, she pooped,” said Hank Gruner, vice president of programs for the Hartford museum. “The doctor said ‘That’s a good sign. She works’.”
The exhbit is careful to use relatively polite, as well as scientific, and often juvenile language (such as “ca-ca”) when referring to the bodily functions. The exhibit also steers clear of gender-specific bodily functions. “It’s especially geared toward the 5th and 7th grade curriculums,” Gruner said.
But certain elements are for younger kids only. The playscape will fit only the smallest children. In its opening week, kids streamed through the exhibits, in school groups or with their parents. Kim Gillett of East Hartford brought her two little daughters, who ran happily through the playscape. “[The exhibit] has got the right title, that’s for sure,” Gillett said.
The girls were learning, too. Screaming with delight, they refused to come out of the gastrointestinal tract, yelling to their mother from inside the last tube: “We’re stuck food! We’re stuck food!”
GROSSOLOGY is at Connecticut Science Center, 250 Columbus Blvd. in Hartford, until March 8. Information: www.ctsciencecenter.org.
