Children Welcome -- Over 10 000 and Counting

On any given day when you visit the Galt Museum & Archives, you will see children in the museum (well, okay, not at the Beer Tasting).

As of 10:50 am this morning, for the first time ever, the Galt broke the 10,000 student visitors in a calendar year mark! This represents approximately 450 school groups at the Galt in 2011. Or, another way, 1/9 the population of Lethbridge. And there's one more class coming in about an hour.

But we also get a great many children visiting with their families. In order to help families make these visits as fun, educational, relaxing, interesting and useful as possible, the Galt has put together two resources for families.

The first is a booklet titled "Visiting a Museum or Historic Site with Children." The book, which can be downloaded from the Galt Museum on our Visitors page.

The booklet includes ideas to do prior to the visit, activities or suggestions to make your visit more enjoyable, and things to do back at home to extend your museum visit.

For those dropping into the Galt, we have a shortened version of the book in a brochure form which can be picked up during your visit.

Hopefully you'll make use of these resources as you visit the Galt and other museums and historical sites during the upcoming holidays. Remember, the Toys and Games exhibit closes January 8 so the next two weeks make the perfect opportunity to check out the exhibit and the Galt's newest resource. You may also wish to come by for the Family Program Top 11 of 2011 (more information on our web-site) which are family activities each day throughout the next two weeks.

I'd love to get your feedback on the booklet and brochure. Let me know how they work. Do you have ideas that would make them even better? Is your favourite game or activity missing?

See you all in 2012!