Backyard 500 Event Returns to Children’s Museum
The Children’s Museum of Richmond held their 2nd annual “Backyard 500” event on Saturday where families could tour the museum and also play in the museum’s backyard.
By Sasha Lester
Backyard 500 Comes to Town
The “Backyard 500” is an outdoor event for held by the Children’s Museum of Richmond for children to gather for fun events such as car racing around the track and arts and crafts. Lisa Hailey, director of marketing and guest services at the museum, said the event was designed to get the kids moving in a fun way. “It is an event geared for children to help them get outside and exercise,” said Hailey, “it’s all about pedaling and it also helps us to promote the fact that we have a backyard that has sand and water. It helps us and it helps the kids, it’s a great and fun event.”
History of the museum.
The museum opened in 2000 and is a 44,000 square foot facility that is partly made from large building blocks and toys to resemble a large jungle gym. The large space allowed for the event to stretch from the entrance of the museum to the actual backyard of the museum filled with real sand and grass areas. The museum holds special events every month, although the Backyard 500 has become a favorite. Hailey also said that the weather plays a big part in the turnout of the event but is confident this year will be just as successful as last year’s turnout of almost 1,000 people. “It was the one weekend in June last year that had a heat advisory…we were way over 100 degrees but we still had 900 people show up. It’s a gorgeous day today and usually the best weather for us is when it’s a little cold or a spot of rain. But I do think it’s going to be a great event,” she said.
Volunteer Help.
Event helper Heather Talley has been to the museum on several occasions and was excited to help out with the Backyard 500. “This is my first time at this event and today I’m going to be painting faces and then later I’ll be going out to help the kids understand the whole concept of pedaling,” said Talley. There were more than 30 event coordinators within the museum helping kids with various activities where they could create shapes with building blocks or paint a picture to take home as a souvenir.
An International Visitor.
The Backyard 500 event is still new to the Richmond community but the word has spread among many families and some for the first time. China native and mother of twins, Anna Belle, just arrived to Richmond from Shanghai on Monday but was happy to attend the event for the first time. “I actually am not familiar with this event down here, I just came to visit the museum but I plan to go to the Backyard event later,” said Belle.
Returning Families.
For father Greg Urquhart, this was his second time returning to the outdoor event. “I came last year and had a good time. I’ll stop by the Backyard 500 although I’m not sure if it will be good for my kids…one is 4 and the other is 16-months-old.” Richmond local, Trei Battle was familiar with the event and brought his 8-year-old nephew to the event so he could go to the track and race around with other kids. “He’s a boy so he loves anything that goes fast,” said Battle. “I came last year and we all had fun so I came back again this year. We’re all excited.”
