Seymour Center Observation Paper

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I went to the Seymour center on Sunday from about eleven a.m. to two p.m. It was very empty when I first arrived, but there was a surge of people a little after noon, possibly they had just gotten out of church. They were mostly families, which a few pairs of college students, and some lone adults or older couples. The range of the families was from very small, one parent one child, and as large as about three adults and four children. Everyone there was having a good time, only one kid cried the entire time I was there. The volunteers were interactive and happy and friendly. There was a lot of background noise but the atmosphere was engaging and cheerful.The Seymour center is an environment that encourages learning in children by catering to their short attention spans, while people who are older will have a harder time learning, proving it is a space meant to educate younger people because children learn differently than adults. I sat in front of the touch tank for about an hour and noticed the children were distracted very easily. The parents worked hard to …show more content…

They traveled in pairs and were very focused on completing the sheet they need for a class. They went from exhibit to exhibit answering their questions and moving on and it was clear the space was not meant to cater to their needs. They were less relaxed than the other patrons, and much less engaged, only about half of them touched animals in the touch tanks. The Seymour center’s unorganized setup, meant to cater to the short attention span of children, caused the students to navigate through the center in an inefficient way to answer their questions, or to go through their question sheets out of order but going through the seymour center in a more efficient way. They were interested in getting the information they needed in the most efficient way possible and, for the most part, ignored the activities of the

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