The Children' Museum Group, made up of the Museum, its Preschool and Nature Center, is the region's leading STEAM education resource. It integrates Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math into hands-on, interdisciplinary activities that foster creative thinking, academic achievement and a spirit of lifelong learning.

Dear Friends of The Children’s Museum Group

I would like to share with you some exciting new developments within The Children’s Museum Group. As we complete our first year in our new but temporary location, our animals, exhibits and educational programs remain active and continue to serve children and families from West Hartford and throughout CT. We have over 100 animals in beautiful environments waiting to greet you. We are also working diligently toward establishing a permanent location among several interesting possibilities.

The Roaring Brook Nature Center, our satellite campus, located in Canton, CT is thriving as a wildlife and nature education center with access to over 100 acres of a diverse habitat and trails. The Nature Center’s expansion in 2018 has allowed us to better focus on the key needs within the community-from education outreach to wildlife rehabilitation programs. The Wildlife Clinic has helped over 300 orphaned and injured animals, including songbirds, small mammals, reptiles and amphibians. We are also in the process of building a new raptor quarantine facility to house more hawks and owls.

With our expanded preschool, students enjoy weekly museum lessons, STEAM programing and participation in a variety of activities that are designed to awaken their curiosity to the world around them. Because we have more space at our current location we have more classrooms and thus, more students, while we maintain a low student to teacher ratio, plus we have a waiting list.

Please welcome our new Development Director, Karen Connal. Karen brings a wealth of experience and capability to our leadership team. She will be reaching out to you soon to introduce herself and to keep you informed of our programs and progress. Our Board of Trustees has been very engaged providing great leadership and commitment to our mission. Thank you to our dedicated staff, we would not be where we are today without them.

To meet our board members and staff, Click Here.

Whether you experienced The Children’s Museum Group as a child, parent, grand-parent, or as a supporter that believes in our mission which is to provide children and families experiential learning covering STEAM, health, nature and the environment, we very much appreciate your continued interest and engagement.

Best regards,

Michael J. Werle, PhD

Executive Director

The Children's Museum Group

Direct: 860.231.2830, 3xt. 600

Cell: 860.559.0411

We are excited to be at our new but temporary location. It is bright, spacious, and safe with lots of free parking. We offer professional staff-led activities or you can have your own self-guided tour for your museum experience. The Children’s Museum is home to over 100 resident education ambassadors – our animals, living in a happy safe environment with new enclosures. We are in the process of refreshing and updating a Science-Based Lab Exhibit in the Early Learning Room. We will be offering a new program Smart Start Learning Adventure.

The Education teams at The Children’s Museum and Roaring Brook Nature Center had quite the summer and is looking forward to a busy fall! Our educators and animal ambassadors were welcomed by thousands of children attending camps, library programs, and summer school across Connecticut this summer. Children discovered the natural world during the Summer Discovery program at Roaring Brook Nature Center. The teams taught programs about electricity, physics, environmental science, the water cycle, and so much more in our S.T.E.A.M. outreach programs.



The Preschool is a play-based program that encourages and develops learning through natural activities. We know that all children are different, and each one comes to us with different strengths and areas for growth. We have five classrooms which serve children between the ages of 3 to 5.The Preschool engages activities which helps to promote children’s self-help, creative, social and emotional, language and literacy, math and science and cognitive skills. Our curriculum is based off the Connecticut Early Learning Development Standards.