REXBURG – The Ricks Academy for Children at the Teton Flood Museum will open with “Back to School” as its first theme, but two things are needed to bring this about.

Children’s Museum/Teton Flood Museum Board member Konnie Young said that those two things are temporary loan items and volunteers to run workshops.

The children’s exhibit is built to be an old-fashioned schoolroom with a tree house reading loft. Dress-ups, lunch pails, and a chalkboard make the room a hands-on place to explore what going to school might have been like 100 years ago.

Part of the children’s exhibit will be a rotating display on a variety of themes. Workshops will be offered to complement the rotating themes.

Young said the Children’s Museum Board hopes to use the rotating portion of the schoolroom to target themes from a variety of categories, including history, science, multicultural studies, mathematics, health, and the arts.

The first theme will be “Back to School” and focus on what schools were like both when settlers first came to the valley and when the Japanese school was established.

Young said she and others on the board hope the community will be excited about the Ricks Academy for Children and the planned exhibits.

Temporary loan items for the display “Back to School” could be such things as photographs, games children might have played during recess, old lunch pails, report cards, and other items.

Volunteers willing to teach workshops might be teaching such things as Palmer Penmanship, lunch box nutrition, and recess games like marbles and handkerchief dolls. The board said it would also appreciate tax-deductible monetary donations for the museum as well to help expand opportunities for children in the community when they attend the museum.

The second theme the board has decided on is a multicultural holiday theme. People with suggestions or leads for a display on Santas from around the world or other multicultural holiday items, they are invited to contact Rhonda Seamons at seamonsr@byui.edu or 496-1520. Seamons should also be contacted if you are interested in volunteering, donating or loaning items to the museum.

REXBURG – Do you know anything about the old Japanese schoolhouse that use to stand out in Burton?

If you do, the Rexburg Children’s Museum and the Teton Flood Museum boards want to talk to you.

Both museum boards are hoping to incorporate it heavily into their children’s exhibit.

Member of the Rexburg Children’s Museum board Konnie Young said the groups do not know very much about the building. According to a news release, the boards want to tell the story of the school and create a permanent exhibit with items and photos related to the school.

Young said the original plan was to create an exhibit that depicted an old-fashioned schoolhouse in remembrance of the Ricks Academy.

It was while the board members were trying for figure out where to get resources for the exhibit that the old Japanese schoolhouse in Burton was mentioned.

“We were excited to hear about the old school building,” Young said. “Most of us had no idea the school ever existed.”

She said they soon found out it was going to be demolished, so they asked the Madison School District, which owned it, if they could salvage items from inside it.

Wood floors and wainscoting were salvaged from the old Japanese schoolhouse, and these will be installed in the new children’s exhibit.

“We still know very little about the school, but we’d like to know more,” Young said, adding they would like anyone with any knowledge of the schoolhouse to get in contact with them.

“We would also like a volunteer from the community to teach Japanese-culture workshops to the children of Rexburg occasionally,” she said.

According to a news release, the exhibit will have desks, a teacher’s lectern, and turn-of-the-century dress-up clothes. It will also feature a tree-house reading loft.

Young said the board’s intention is to make the exhibit more than something to look at.

“We’d like this space to truly be a schoolroom,” she said, adding there will be worktables, mini-classes and workshops.

Thus far, the only items from the Japanese school are the floorboards and wainscoting.

Anyone who has photos, artifacts, personal stories or information about the history of the school is invited to contact Lawrence Coates at 356-6462 or e-mail him at coatesl@byui.edu.

The city announced recently that the Rexburg Teton Flood Museum will be closed beginning Sept. 4 for about four to six weeks. During that time, the installation of the children’s exhibit will take place. Also, the Teton Flood Museum Committee will oversee painting and recarpeting of the entire museum and fixing up the bathrooms to become compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The new children’s exhibit will be complete in October, when the Teton Flood Museum will be reopened.