Children's Museum Marketing

As many of you know, we love to dress our dinos for special occasions. They've had witch hats for Halloween and Santa hats for the holidays. So of course when we learned Indianapolis would be hosting the Big Game in February, and thousands of football fans would be heading to the city, we started planning.

We decided to tie our dino's accessories into one of the Super Bowl Host Committee programs called Super Scarves. The goal of the Super Scarves initiative was to engage individuals who might not otherwise be able to participate in the Big Game. Volunteer knitters were asked to handcraft 8,000 scarves, enough for each of the volunteers to wear during the Big Game. They've far exceeded their goal. Volunteers from 43 states and three countries have knit more than 12,500 scarves. That's not including the five GIANT scarves they created for our alamosaurs breaking out of the museum and brachiosaurs peeking into the museum.

As you can imagine, creating our scarves wasn't an easy task. Two expert knitters, Karin Schmitt and Alison Jester from Broad Ripple Knits, were the masterminds behind our massive Super Scarves. They knitted five scarves in all—3 small and 2 large—so all five of our larger-than-life dinosaurs could look festive.

Instead of yarn, the women used rope...and lots of it! Each large scarf measures in at 20 inches wide and 30 feet long. Each small scarf is 2 feet wide and 20 feet long. In all, they used nearly 5,000 feet of rope! And of course regular knitting needles wouldn't do. The women used broomstick handles to knit the scarves. It took approximately 12 hours to complete the 5 scarves. Now that's a lot of knitting!

The mother dino, affectionately named Yvonne after her donor, is leading the charge already donning her special scarf. The museum wanted to honor museum Trustee Yvonne Shaheen, who was one of several knitters who helped create scarves for the Super Scarves program. Pretty soon the dinos will be getting other football-related accessories, too! We can't wait to show off the museum to all of the out of town visitors, and the dinos–scarves and all—will be right there at 30th and Illinois to greet them. If you're coming to Indianapolis to be part of the festivities and you're  looking for local activities for kids, be sure to add The Children's Museum of Indianapolis to your list!