Madison Children’s Museum announces “Day in a Kid’s Life Project” for May 7

Madison Commons
April 10, 2014

JULIA JACOBSON

Although social media often tells the story of older students, adults and retirees, online networking sites sometimes neglect a small, but still important group: children.

A lack of social media describing the daily life of children is what motivated Anna Zeide, a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student and Public Humanities Fellow at the Madison Children’s Museum, to begin her project.

Along with Children’s Museum staff, Zeide has designed a social media campaign centered on children called “Day in a Kid’s Life.”

On May 7, 2014, the Children’s Museum will be inviting students, parents, teachers and friends to join the Museum for a day of what Zeide describes as a day “user-generated” documentation.

Students from different neighborhoods and communities across Madison will have the opportunity to share their stories on social media using hashtags, and several older students will be recruited as reporters to write more in depth reflections of their day. At the end of the event, students will meet at the Children’s Museum to talk about what they learned.

The Children’s Museum is expecting 100-200 Madison area students to participate in the day’s activities.

Zeide said the event was modeled after events done by Isthmus magazine and the #UWRightNow twitter hash tag campaign.

“I was really excited at this program because that feeds into the hunger I’ve been feeling for making the humanities public,” Zeide said.

Zeide, who is graduating with a Ph.D in History this spring, said the project is intended to show how seemingly trivial events are actually of great importance in a larger historical context. For example, it’s challenging to find records of what children living in 1800s cabins were doing because their routines weren’t documented.

“We are creating records for the future,” Zeide said. “What kids ate for breakfast, or how they got to school are important, because this can flesh out the details of their life.”

Zeide said “Day in a Kid’s Life” is a part of a larger program called Kidshare, which does other projects within the Madison community such as a traveling story booth and teaching kids how to make short films and videos. The Children’s Museum also recently partnered with the Meadowood Neighborhood Center to teach middle school students how to tell and record stories.

“Details matter, kids voices matter. Hopefully, this project will give us a sense that we need to pay attention to what kids are saying, and will create awareness of different textures across Madison,” Zeide said.

The Children’s Museum is still looking for participants to partner with the museum and students for the event. If interested, please contact Anna Zeide at annazeide@gmail.com.