How do you get a person age six to explore and learn about heritage for longer than five minutes? Museo Packs are backpacks with activities designed for children ages 6 to 12. Each Museo Pack has a theme and contains a series of learning activities. The packs are developed to inspire, motivate and teach children (and parents!) about the history and culture of Banff National Park by bringing history and culture alive. The Packs are available to borrow year round at the Museum’s Front Desk and are included with Museum admission.
Art Adventures! was developed to teach children about landscape art and to foster an appreciation of our National Park’s landscape and history. Geoshapes! is an activity where children create landscape art using fun and colourful shapes. Art Detective! uses clues to encourage kids to find mystery landscape paintings. Colour! provides transparent colour paddles to teach about colour mixing, and about the colours found in Peter and Catharine Whyte’s landscape paintings of the national park.
The Adventures of Peter and Catharine contains a series of activities telling the story of our founders, Peter and Catharine Whyte. Through this story, children will discover more about Banff’s history and culture. Childhood uses puzzle cards to tell the story of Peter and Catharine’s very different childhoods. Art School draws inspiration from Peter and Catharine’s portraits and teaches children how to draw their self-portrait. Build your own log home! challenges children to build their own log cabin, like Peter and Catharine did. Children learn about the Stoney Nakoda First Nations people and the Whyte’s good friend Chief Walking Buffalo in Native Friends. Winter Fun is a fun skiing game, which includes colour-your-own medals!
That’s Elemental! is based on the four elements of nature; earth, water, air, and fire. This natural science pack uses activities and Connection Cards to teach kids about how interconnected our environment is and how important it is to keep ecosystems healthy and intact. The water activity River Friends, introduces ten animals through illustrated character cards. The air activity, a storybook, When Bear Stole the Chinook by Harriet Peck Taylor tells a First Nations legend about the Chinook winds. The earth activity, Rocky Mountain Bash, is an interactive way to learn about mountain building. Take the fire activities include, Fire Cycle Challenge and the Tree Cookie Count which teaches children about trees, how to count the rings to tell their age and when fires occurred. Create an environmental masterpiece with our Create your own Ecosystem activity!
All packs contain a magnifying glass for children wanting to take a closer look at artifacts and evaluation sheets for your children to rate their favorite activities.
