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The Bayou Country Children’s Museum in Thibodaux will host the Play It Forward Casino Night fundraiser March 23, the last fundraiser to be hosted inside the new building before the museum’s exhibits arrive in May.
“This is the fourth Play It Forward event, and it is our largest fundraiser,” said Play It Forward chair Mimi Folse. “About 300 people usually attend the adults-only night of professionally run table games of blackjack, poker, roulette and craps.”
Tickets to the event are $50 per person through March 16, and $65 per person thereafter and at the door. They may be purchased at Shoe Shi and Birdsall Jewelry, both in Thibodaux, and at Outside and In in Houma. A ticket will include food, drinks and starting chips for the evening’s table games. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m., and gaming will be from 7 to 10 p.m. The event will feature live music from Jacob Hebert as well as a 16-piece jazz ensemble and both live and silent auctions.
“Our purse auction is our most popular auction,” said Folse, who helped to organize the museum’s last three fundraisers, including the Night at the Booseum events. “We auction off five designer purses, and, after the auction ends, we call the winners up to claim their bags. One of the purses will have a pair of diamond earrings from Birdsall Jewelry inside it.”
Other auction items include a copper water fountain, a fishing trip with Bo Graffton and a Saints jersey signed by Drew Brees.
“Last year’s casino night raised $80,000,” said Christy Naquin, executive director of the museum. “We’ve also had three Booseum events, and those raise about $35,000. We will continue to have fundraisers after the museum opens.”
If the upcoming Play It Forward Casino Night brings in as much money as the previous event, the museum will have raised at total of $420,000 to put toward its $2.5 million price tag.
The 12,700 square-foot building was completed in October, and Naquin is anxiously awaiting the arrival of the museum’s 12 exhibits.
“We hope that they will begin installing the exhibits in late May, and the exhibits will take one or two months to be set up,” Naquin said. “We hope to be open by the fall.”
Those who visit the museum will first be greeted by a large mural of an oak tree in the building’s lobby. The tree, dubbed the Giving Tree, will have a leaf for each person, organization or business that donated to the construction of the building.
“The main walkway through the museum is blue, like a waterway,” Naquin said. “The theme is ‘A Bayou Runs Through It,’ and visitors will see things they would see along the bayou as they get closer to the Gulf of Mexico.”
The first stop on the bayou will be a giant globe welcome exhibit that will give visitors a brief history of first people to settle in the bayou area, followed by a health and wellness area with an x-ray puzzle and child-sized exercise equipment.
“Children will learn that what they put into their bodies – food – they need to put out by exercising,” Naquin said. “The museum will also have a sugar cane maze and a full-size sugar cane harvester inside the building. We raised a few eyebrows with planners when we said we wanted a harvester in the building, but I think the children will really enjoy it.”
After learning about agriculture, children can visit the Cajun Cottage and Rouses Farmer’s Market to learn about other forms of produce that are indigenous to the area.
“Kids love to play in a grocery store,” Naquin said. “They can take a buggy, get produce and walk over to the Cajun Cottage and prepare a meal for their friends in a restaurant area that will be set up.”
While still on the northern end of the Bayou, children will also get a chance to play in performance gallery and puppet stage area with light mixers, mirrors, costumes and changeable backgrounds or on a Mardi Gras float shaped like an alligator.
“Children will be able to throw beads from the Mardi Gras float and a chute will bring the beads right back to them,” she said.
Further down the bayou, there will be an offshore platform display to show visitors about the life of oilfield workers on the rigs as well as the ecosystem under the rig and a water and estuary table for visitors to study coastal restoration, saltwater intrusion and sediment diversion. There will also be exhibits on ship building, shrimp boats, a duck blind and construction. For the museum’s smaller visitors, there will be an early childhood gallery and the Grand Old Oak.
“Children will be able to climb inside the tree, and there will be cameras in the tree so that parents may watch their children on screens outside of the tree,” Naquin said.
The last stop on the bayou-themed walkway will be Safetyville, an exhibit that will teach children about weather safety, gun safety, fire safety and boat safety.
“We will have a full-time uniformed deputy from the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office here working at the display,” Naquin said. “There will be television screens and audiovisual to simulate lighting and thunder to show visitors what severe weather looks, and WWL meteorologist Carl Arredondo will voice the videos.”
One of the museum’s exhibits is so large that it will be stationed under an awning outside of the building.
“Visitors will be able to board a shortened offshore supply vessel, with the captain’s cabin still attached,” Naquin said. “Inside the cabin, there will be digital videos to watch and an interactive control panel.”
In addition to all the displays, visitors will also be able to reserve one of two available party rooms or purchase mementos from their trip at the gift shop.
“We will have fun and unique Cajun things and educational items in the gift shop, and we will also feature local artists’ work,” Naquin said.
Once the museum opens, visitors may purchase group tickets for $5 per person and an individual ticket will cost $7. Year-long memberships to the museum start at $50 for two people, and a membership for four family members with a minimum of one adult is $100. Members will also get a discount on items in the gift shop.
In the meantime, the museum is taking reservations for those looking to rent the building for an event, and costs to rent the building are determined on a case by case basis.
“I am so excited,” said Naquin, who has been with the museum since 2009. “I can’t wait to open the doors and hear giggles and feet in the building.”
One person who is certainly just as excited as Naquin is museum’s board president Kathleen Gros, who has been with the project since its inception.
“We started this project in 1998, and it’s wonderful to see it get to this point,” Gros said. “We are so grateful for volunteers and donors who the project supported.”
Gros said her favorite display is the alligator-shaped Mardi Gras float, but she confessed she was a bit leery of who would be picking up the beads thrown by the children.
“I figured my job, once the museum opened, would be to pick up all the beads,” Gros said, laughing. “Every exhibit will be educational and entertaining, an extension of the classroom.”
An early model shows where exhibits will be inside the Bayou Country Children’s Museum in Thibodaux. The museum will feature 12 main exhibits, including displays on agriculture, shrimping and offshore drilling. At right, museum board president Kathleen Gros and museum executive director Christy Naquin stand in the lobby of the museum, which is scheduled to open in the fall.
