Our Plans
Our property is located on Arapaho Avenue, adjacent to the St. Augustine Shipyard, behind Target on US Highway 1.
The tag! campus is master-planned and designed by PLACE Alliance, and will employ low impact, high-performance development strategies and building materials to reduce environmental impact.
The Museum’s four-acre campus will come to life in phases, beginning with Discovery. Here’s a peek into what we’ve planned:
Indoor Experiences
Explore history and culture while climbing up, around and through a delightful maze of passageways and towers. Interactive exhibits, along with creative lighting and projection systems, let you get hands on with navigation, geography, map reading, and more.
Hands-on fun with wind tubes, Augmented Reality sandboxes, and multiple working weather stations on campus help children gain new appreciation for the awesome force and fragile balance between sun, wind, weather, water and land.
This lovely, light-filled space overlooks Our Big Backyard on one side and the Rain Gardens on the other. A gift from The Junior Service League of St. Augustine, it is designed especially for birthday parties and special celebrations.
Dream up new things, create new inventions, put things together, and take things apart. Welcome to an exciting workshop filled with hammers and nails, saws and sanders, screws and screwdrivers, things and gears, laser cutters and looms, wood, cardboard, LED’s, and 3D printers.
Part indoor, part outdoor, and all fun, this large covered screened-in porch hosts makers activities, playtime with Rigamajig or our awesome magnet wall, and a cozy spot for a quick bite to eat.
You’ve worked up quite an appetite with all this building and brainstorming. Serving up a variety of salads, sandwiches, fruit, and healthy menu options for kids and adults, The Café is the perfect place to recharge your body’s battery.
Welcome to a space with the flexibility to host traveling museum exhibits, morning toddler learning, and daily hands-on popup STEAM activities. With glass walls looking out onto lush trees and gardens, a complete catering kitchen, and adjacency to The Café and The Porch, The Gathering Place is perfect for hosting parties and special events.
Outdoor Experiences
Let’s play outside! Made possible by the generosity of The Lastinger Family, Our Big Backyard invites children and families to experience the beauty and wonder of the great outdoors. A spectacular forest of native Oaks, Magnolias and Palms provides a scenic natural environment for exploring ecosystems, discovering the secrets that lie under our feet, and in the treetops above.
Join us for a rare and wonderful treat. Click here to find out what The Musical Swings are all about.
This enchanting woodland setting is a gift from the Cofrin Family. Lose yourself in a book from our tree trunk library, compose some music on low-volume instruments, try your hand at plein-air painting, put on an outdoor puppet show, or just kick back and relax in a hammock chair.
How would you produce food in a place with very little soil and water… like the desert, or even Mars? Our Aquaponics exhibit from Flagler College Enactus is a fascinating hands-on exploration of sustainable agricultural systems that support plants and animals through water recycling.
Circles and cycles of life abound in the Mary Ellen MacDonald Collins Butterfly Garden. Discover the amazing metamorphosis that takes place as caterpillars munch their way to beauty on host plants. Look closely to discover hidden fairy gardens where butterflies quench their thirst on tiny puddles.
Hopscotch your way through a royal garden carpeted in giant chess boards. Enjoy a friendly game of chess, checkers or giant Jenga. Use the checkerboards as giant graph paper and design a building with oversized blocks, or create a life-size maze and challenge your friends to find their way out!
From the magical indoor world of the Weather and Nature gallery, you can follow those raindrops outside for more hands-on, hands-in splash-able fun with WaterPlay!
The Rain Gardens are part of the larger story of the Museum’s sustainable design initiatives, made possible through a gift from The Rich Maguire Environmental Education Fund, The Newman Family Foundation. Families can observe, up close, how rainwater collects and is filtered through the gardens of rocks and native plants, reducing flooding and minimizing pollution in rivers and streams.
Climb high up into the treetops for a bird’s eye view of Our Big Backyard! This delightful network of bouncy trails and trampoline-like play areas means you’re free as a bird to explore life up in the trees.
Have a blast with sticks and bricks, blocks and blankets, and all kinds of unique building materials. The Glunt Family Build A Fort is the perfect outdoor spot for planning and building the ultimate fort.
Presented by Florida Blue, this is the place for digging in the dirt and growing vegetables, herbs and flowers. Hop on a pedal-powered composter, then try your hand at pumping water the old-fashioned way. And don’t forget to check out the worm farm.
