Plan Your Party

Call 919.220.5429 ext. 315

between 9–5 pm, Mon–Fri.

Or email us at parties@ncmls.org
Parties must be booked 15 days in advance. 

BASIC PARTY

$150 members

$175 non-members

Ages 1-10

Includes:

• All day admission for 20 children
• Party room for 1 hour
• Free museum invites
• Additional guests $5 per child

Add-On Worry-Free Packages*

Let us handle the details so
you can capture the memories!

Up to 20 children:

Cake $60, Pizza $70

Pizza & Cake $95

Up to 12 children:

Cake $55, Pizza $50

Pizza & Cake $75

*Includes paper goods and utensils, lemonade or water.

Additional guests: $5 per child
Custom Gift Bags $6.99 per child
Train Rides $2.50 each

10% discount for members

THEMED PARTY

$250 members
$275 non-members
Includes:

• All day admission for 12 children
• 30-minute themed experience w/crafts
• Party room for 1 hour and 30 min

• Free museum invites
• Additional guests $10 per child

Party Themes

Animals  ages 3–10
Butterflies  ages 3–7
Bugs  ages 3–7
Dinosaurs  ages 4–8
Science Magic  ages 7–10
Train  ages 4–8 (beginning Jan 2011)

Party Times

Sat: 10:30 am, 1 pm, 3:30 pm
Sun: 1 pm, 3:30 pm
Weekday parties available upon request.

Need more time? Ask us about extending!

Use of refrigerator/freezer space and CD player available. Download flyer

• Signature Learning Experiences – create experiences that are interactive, relevant, smart about using technology and generate earned income for financial stability;

• Sustainability and Green Initiatives – provide a teaching tool for our members and visitors as well as a way to reduce Museum environmental impact and operating costs;

• Capital Replacement – ensure planned, strategic lifecycle replacements as exhibits age.

Photo by Anne Edgarton, Burlington Times

Conclusion

We envision a one-of-a-kind place, a science park, offering extraordinary experiences indoors, outdoors, and through virtual media where children and adults learn through the pursuit of their own interests and curiosity. Realizing the full potential of the Museum will require enthusiastic users, committed partners and engaged stakeholders. As the Museum moves forward, investment to support our key annual priorities as well as exhibit fabrication and maintenance, educational programs and ongoing refurbishment will be critical to our success as an important community resource. We invite you to visit us, experience what the Museum is all about and learn more about what an investment in the Museum of Life and Science can do for our region.

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Make a difference

We welcome an opportunity to discuss in more depth how you can make an important difference to the Museum’s mission by supporting project or capital needs. Here are a few ideas:



Greening the Museum

What would it mean for our visitors and for Museum sustainability to have a solar-powered café or an electric car recharging station? Environmental sustainability and the greening of the Museum include a number of projects, such as using solar panels for some outdoor exhibits to reduce the Museum’s carbon footprint, reduce energy costs, and educate our visitors about actions they can take to do the same in their own homes and businesses. The Museum is seeking partners to help us become greener and demonstrate these alternatives to a large audience.



Making Exhibits New Again

The Museum has a number of exhibits that are visitor favorites and overdue for renovation or replacement. For example, our Ellerbee Creek Railroad offers rides aboard open-air train carriages pulled by a scale model C.P. Huntington locomotive. The locomotive, thanks to a generous gift from the Teer family, is a new model delivered in 2007. To add educational value to this experience, as well as ensure train operations important to the Museum’s operating revenue, the Museum now needs to replace the older carriages, make improvements to the train station and add exhibits or visual elements along the ride. The largest component of this renewal project is new train carriages totaling $185,000. Improvements to the station and exhibit elements along the ride would cost an additional $120,000.

The Museum’s Geology gallery is now nearly 20 years old and in need of updating to reflect current science and use of interpretive technology to help visitors connect with information. Likewise, the Aerospace gallery, while offering a wonderful connection with our space program, will benefit from technology updates. As proof of concept, the Museum has installed a new, unique interface with Earth satellite images – as visitors turn and tilt a display table they control the view and zoom of this interactive satellite map of our planet. By refreshing our Aerospace exhibit with strong technology interfaces we can more effectively deliver learning experiences.



Learning Laboratories – Indoors and Out 

The Museum’s five lab spaces are used as classrooms for young children through high school programming. Through a partnership with the Contemporary Science Center, one of our labs has been remodeled to be equipped similarly to a corporate lab to support the activities and content of these classes. The other four Museum lab/classroom spaces have not been updated for over sixteen years, and receive constant, hard use as essential spaces for school, family and camp experiences. We have a number of ideas about renovating our four remaining older labs to support learning around a specific discipline, including engineering (using Lego to connect to learners of all ages), medicine, or biotechnology. The cost to upgrade a lab space ranges from $100,000 to $150,000 in capital costs.

The Museum has two outdoor classrooms, built in 2009 with bond funds and private support. These relatively simple outdoor structures have proven invaluable to our camps and classes as a way to deliver educational programming on site and take advantage of our outdoor exhibits as a learning environment. The demand for these experiences remains strong, and the Museum seeks to build an additional outdoor classroom to support this growth. An outdoor classroom will cost about $70,000 to construct and equip. We also envision a better way to connect students with our wetland for hands-on learning experiences, sampling and other educational activities – a wetland dock would cost about $15,000.



Learning Experiences for Grownups 

As the Museum grows into our mission of lifelong learning, we have started with an innovative and successful platform for adult engagement with science. Our current activities are monthly science cafes, called Periodic Tables, and the Science in the Triangle website partnership. One can read seasonal updates about the Wetland and it's inhabitants on the Museum blog The Greg Dodge Journal. The Museum plans to upgrade our on-site meeting spaces to provide required technology and amenities for adult learning. Looking ahead, we have identified opportunities to move to the next level with adult engagement in science and are seeking program support of $25,000 to realize this vision.



Exhibits Improvements and Support 

There are a host of opportunities to partner with the Museum in delivering an exceptional learning environment. Our new Dinosaur Trail was funded with support from Durham County bonds and private donors who “adopted” dinosaurs. One dinosaur remains available for adoption – the Edmontonia. Supporting the Edmontonia with a gift of $50,000 will be recognized on the Dinosaur Trail donor wall and exhibit signage, and funds will ensure the successful operation of our newest outdoor environment.

In our large outdoor exhibitions Explore the Wild and Catch the Wind, the Museum is seeking partners to help us install additional drinking fountains at an estimated cost of $15,000. We also want to expand our wireless capacity to serve visitors and educational programs in our outdoor environments at an estimated cost of $27,000. There are also needs for visitor amenities in our visitor courtyard and café. With high summer visitation, we need a “mist station” in this area (estimated cost $3,000) and based on visitor input would like to include a sound system for music for our outdoor café area (estimated cost $7,500).

This year, our top priority for fundraising is to secure about $450,000 for our annual fund (or 7.5% of our $5.9 million operating budget). To support hands-on learning every day at the Museum, our budget covers a wide variety of people, equipment and support items.


The Museum’s largest single investment is in our staff – dedicated team members who routinely go “above and beyond” to provide enriching educational experiences for our community. What materials or other goods does the Museum use to meet our mission? Consider the immersive impact of the Magic Wings® Butterfly House, which requires utilities, butterfly chrysalises and care for the tropical plants. Learning by doing through facilitated experiments takes materials ranging from liquid nitrogen to binoculars to plant seedlings. Hands-on, immersive experiences that are a memorable part of learning require both the materials and the staff to create valuable educational experiences – and annual fund support makes our success possible.

You can support the Museum’s annual fund by:

• Become a Corporate Member or Donor. Many leading corporations in our area contribute to the Museum’s mission with gifts ranging from $600 to over $20,000 annually, and receive recognition and admission passes to share the Museum with employees or clients.

• Become a Supporting Member. You will enjoy enhanced member benefits and recognition and your leadership will encourage others to invest in science education. The Chrysalis Society recognizes members who give $1,000 or more annually; Patrons are recognized for a contribution of $600 and Sustainers for a contribution of $300.

• Support a project or program.*

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*Support these projects or programs:

Sponsor free admission for children under 3 for the year and benefit over 30,000 of the Triangle’s littlest learners - $25,000


Support the Museum’s “Science in a Suitcase”


Become a program serving Durham and schools and homeschoolers in our region - $15,000 special event sponsor and enhance the visitor experience while gaining positive community recognition, support ranges from $1,500 to $5,000


Support the Investigate Health! Lab to bring hands-on science to visitors


Butterfly House – gifts of any amount may be designated to support costs of butterfly chrysalises, utilities and horticulture totaling about $80,000 annually. The chrysalises come from Central and South America, Asia and Africa and are a means of sustainable agriculture in the developing world whereby farmers can make a living from the forest’s natural resources.


Educational supplies – gifts of any amount may be designated to provide materials from paper and glue to Petri dishes and microscopes. The Museum needs over $50,000 annually for materials to create hands-on learning excitement for children served in our family and school learning programs.

Animal care – gifts of any amount can support the care and feeding of the Museum’s 60 species of live animals that connect people with the natural world. It takes over $90,000 a year to feed and care for our animals – bears, the donkey, lemurs and tarantulas – just to name a few. Our animal department grocery list might surprise you with items like 40,000 crickets, 3,000 apples, over 2 tons of bear chow and 365 bunches of kale.


Adopt an Animal with a gift of $45 or $60 and receive a stuffed animal and learning package to keep or share. Buy a Brick in the Dinosaur Trail with a gift of $300 or $500. 

The new $1.5 million Dinosaur Trail opened!

It's a 2-acre outdoor environment featuring life-sized, scientifically-accurate Cretaceous dinosaur models and a fossil dig site for visitors to find and keep their own small fossils. Additional updates across our campus include the soundSpace exhibit, created in partnership with Duke University researchers and funded with a grant from SunTrust, enabling visitors to learn about math and music in a fun environment. The Museum also installed Flip It, Fold It, Figure It Out – offering math experiences without numbers through tiling, origami, experimenting with volumes and more.

A varied schedule of special events is now offered

both on- and off-site, featuring topics like “Wild About Animals,” “Robot Rumble” or “Fall Harvest.” For adults, the Museum has a monthly science café series called Periodic Tables where up to 100 community participants gather to discuss real science in a relaxed environment. Our popular website continues to attract learners of all ages, both locally and world-wide, with innovative offerings and opportunities for co-creation of content.

Educational programs

Continuing our strong track record for K-8 educational experience, we manage the science kits that form the hands-on science curriculum for Durham Public Schools (DPS) through a subsidized contract. We have increased the capacity and offerings of our camps and classes to meet demand. The Museum secured a grant to launch “Genome Diner”, a program to engage DPS students with scientists working in human genomics. Expanding our reach with high school students, the Museum has a new partnership with the Contemporary Science Center to offer immersive, day-long experiences with the real science of Research Triangle Park in a newly renovated Museum laboratory.

As we look ahead to 2010 and beyond, the Museum will focus on offering an excellent visitor and learning experience on our campus through exhibit improvements, member and visitor programs and services and enhancing our educational offerings. 

Highlights of our plan include:

Opening “Contraptions” (a new exhibit on building simple machines in the old Treehouse space) and hosting “Holiday Springs and Sprockets” traveling exhibit. Additional exhibit development including “re-invention” for one additional old exhibit gallery and adding new technology components throughout our exhibits.

Exhibit renewal and remediation to improve the visitor learning experience including improvements to the train, upgrades for our old classrooms and adding another outdoor classroom. Providing more learning experiences for adults through Periodic Tables, our monthly science café, and improvements to our meeting spaces.

Incorporating sustainability initiatives including a large composter for Museum waste, conducting an energy audit thanks to Triangle J Council of Governments, begin updating our lighting grid for energy efficiencies and continuing to explore with a number of partners ideas including solar energy at the café or a plug-in station for an electric car.

Continuing to add value to the member experience as the Museum seeks to grow membership to over 8,500 households. Launch a pilot project to serve historically underserved communities in Durham with a new “Ignite Learning” membership initiative.

Support science!

Our mission is to create a place of lifelong learning where people, from young child to senior citizen, embrace science as a way of knowing. The Museum offers a motivating and enriching environment for learning – including our campus, our outreach programs and our on-line experiences. Our vision of lifelong learning includes children and families, educators and students, adults and seniors so we create opportunities for all ages.

Support an effective organization.

The Museum is a nearly 65-year old success story, rooted in sharing learning experiences about the physical world. The Museum is led by Barry Van Deman, an experienced museum professional and science educator. The Museum’s Board of Directors is highly engaged in monitoring results and providing strategic leadership. Museum staff are dedicated, trusted experts who enthusiastically serve the community. The Museum has an excellent record of fiscally-sound performance. Leading Triangle corporations and competitive federal grant programs have chosen to support the Museum because of our innovative programs that make a difference and our ability to produce results.

Support the Museum's strong educational and economic impact on Durham, the Triangle and the State.

Educators value our exceptional interactive environment – in fact, they’ve made the Museum a top 10 school field trip destination in our state. School groups come from across North Carolina to use the Museum to motivate students. For lifelong learners of all ages, the Museum’s brand of experiential and social learning is a key building block of scientific literacy. As an environment where we can grow, play, and appreciate natural beauty, the Museum enhances our quality of life and helps to attract highly-skilled workers and investment to our community. The Museum generated $13.3 million in net economic impact for Durham County last year.

Why invest in the Museum of Life and Science?

The Museum began in 1946 as a small trailside nature center. Generations of families have participated in joyful, enlightening experiences that spark wonder, touch the heart and expand the mind.


Today, the Museum of Life and Science offers a uniquely accessible indoor-outdoor learning environment – an 84-acre campus with engaging experiences across science disciplines through 285 hands-on exhibits. Our frequent special events, traveling exhibits, partnerships with Triangle science organizations and wide-ranging programs offer an incredible diversity of exploration and free-choice learning. We serve about 400,000 visitors annually, and touch another 50,000 people with outreach learning experiences.


Our members and visitors have been delighted with recent expansions. The Museum now offers major outdoor attractions featuring wildlife and a wetland, wind exhibits and the new Dinosaur Trail. Indoors, we have new exhibits that serve young children, offer hands-on health investigation, enable visitors to explore math or nanoscale science and more. Our operating budget has grown by over 50% in the past five years (from $3.7 million to $5.9 million) and strong community support and contributions have fueled our success in offering award-winning informal learning experiences and environments.


The Museum’s fundraising priorities for 2009 are to raise nearly $450,000 in annual fund support and to secure additional funds for capital improvements across campus.