It's hard to believe that Thanksgiving is upon us and with it the beginning of the holiday giving season! At the Children's Discovery Museum on the Saskatchewan, we have a lot to be thankful for, including the generous giving of supporters like you. This past year:
-We marked the one-year anniversary of opening our doors in Market Mall. In our first year, we hosted over 11,000 visitors.
-We inaugurated Tim Hortons' Day. On the 7th of each month, admission to the Museum is free to all, courtesy of our sponsor, Tim Hortons.
-We opened our first international traveling exhibit, Much More Munsch, presented by Cameco. This wonderful, fully bilingual, interactive exhibit has been experienced by over 325,000 children at various locations in Canada and the U.S. including the McCord Museum in Montreal, Telus Science Centre in Calgary, Royal Alberta Museum in Edmonton, London Regional Children's Museum in Ontario, Manitoba Children's Museum in Winnipeg, and now, through December 31, is on display at the Children's Discovery Museum in Saskatoon. If you haven't seen it, we hope you can get there.
-We doubled our square footage and staff. The museum now has a paid staff of 8, and we are leasing additional space in Market Mall to house the Much More Munsch exhibit and additional programming space. This doubling is on a temporary basis, but we'd love to make it permanent with the help of generous donors like you!
-Through our Winter 2010 Access Program, 600 students from Saskatoon's Community schools visited the Museum at no cost to them. The participating teachers and children were delighted with the opportunity, and grateful to all who have made these visits possible.
To continue our progress, we need your help. The donations of supporters like you make up the "bread and butter" of our operating fund -- the money that allows us to keep the doors open and the lights on, and to continue providing quality programming for Saskatoon's children.
The great thing about a gift to the Children's Discovery Museum is that you can be certain it has a real impact. Research demonstrates that a child's intellectual capacity is not fixed at birth. Rather, the "wiring" of the brain's neurons depends on the experiences to which that child is exposed throughout infancy and childhood. So creating an enriched environment for young children is vital, and your help can have a real and lasting impact on the children of our community.
Consider this feedback from Carlee Eng, a teacher who accompanied her Bishop Roborecki Community School class to the Museum through our Access Program:
"I just got back from the Museum with my pre-kindergarten classes and we loved it! It was so nice to bring the kids somewhere where they could touch, hold, feel, explore, and play with EVERYTHING! When we got back to school, the kids were still talking about being vets, so we have now set up a big vet center in our room!
Thank you for inspiring our learning outside and inside our classroom! The Museum inspired so much creativity with the students-I loved seeing them perform on the stage, it was great!
Thank you for giving these students an opportunity they would never have had otherwise!"
When we get reports like this, we KNOW that what we're doing is working, and we are more committed than ever to continue and expand that work. Please help us do so with your donation today. Call the Museum at (306) 683-2555 to make your donation now, come in person or mail a cheque to Children's Discovery Museum, Market Mall, 116 - 2325 Preston Avenue South, Saskatoon, SK, S7J 2G2. We accept credit cards, cash or cheques; many donors find monthly direct bank debits most convenient. You can also make an online donation right now by clicking on CanadaHelps.org.
The first 50 supporters to call and make a donation of $50 or more will receive a free boxed set of eight holiday cards designed by Museum patrons.
Thank you again for your past support. We hope to see you in the Museum soon!
Sincerely,
Erica Bird, President
and the Board of the Children's Discovery Museum on the Saskatchewan
www.museumforkids.sk.ca
