"Do you want help out with those groceries?"

"Where's the milk? I need milk!"

Kids jumped into the role-playing of a new grocery store exhibit shortly after the ribbon-cutting at A. C. Gilbert's Discovery Village unveiled the new Grocery Store exhibit "The Village Grocery" on the last day of August 2006.

The main units of the approximately $35,000 exhibit was fabricated over the summer in IE's shop in Salem, and installed the last week of August. It features a hand-crank converyer belt, a motion-sensor/heat-sensor-activated 'scanner,' several unique grocery shelves with faux groceries (supplied by Discovery Village), and topped off by a 1940's produce scale, which was discovered in the warehouse of Sheridan Fruit Company in Portland, who agreed to part with it for a nominal fee.

The exhibit replaced an earlier IE-fabricated exhibit "In The Forest," which has been sold and at last report was seen on its way to the Medford children's museum.

Kim Baldwin, A. C. Gilbert's Assistant Director, kept a daily blog of the final few weeks of preparation and installation of the new exhibit through the Salem Statesman Journal newspaper.

The Grocery Store exhibit is the latest in a long line of exhibits designed and built for A. C. Gilbert's Discovery Village by Interpretive Exhibits over the past decade and a half. We're currently putting the wraps on a specially-created 'dinosaur slide' for the upcoming dinosaur room to be opened in late September 2006.

Click the thumbnails to look at the full photo...