Charleston Museum aims to bring out the kid in all of us

With summer in full heat, what better way to spend it than in a museum.

The Charleston Museum is cooling down kids' summers with its Kid Tours, a series designed to highlight artifacts from its collection that fascinate kids. Every Wednesday in June and July, the curator-led tour starts at 3:30 p.m.

"I'm always amazed at what the curators do to bring it to life for the children," said Stephanie Thomas, Education Coordinator for the Charleston Museum. "It's neat to see all this information brought down to a child's level and opening up items and artifacts in our collection and putting in on their level so they have a new appreciation for it."

In each themed tour, the curator will give a presentation to the kids, answer questions or lead a discussion and then kids will have two hands-on craft activities. They are free to go throughout the museum afterwards. Open to children of any age, activities are free to museum members and free with admission to non-members.

"It's good for families with kids that come here all the time and in the summer when people are visiting," Thomas said. "Kids are as young as two and as old as 14 or 15. Parents are just as into as well. There's not really an age limit. Sometimes adults will just see it and show up because they are interested, too."

"We always try to change it up with stories, tours, crafts or sometimes we'll pull something out of storage and you'll see something that we don't normally have on display, something you can't normally see. What you see in the museum is just a percentage of what we have," she said.

So far this summer, tours have featured themes of "Endangered Animals," "Hats Off!," "Making Music," "The Tales of Hans Christian Andersen," and "Snakes."

Upcoming tours will be "Stars and Stripes," "Mummy Madness," "Things That Go Boom!," "A Whale of a Tale," "Fantastic Fans" and "Horns and Antlers."

"Exhibits are small, so there are a lot more things we can bring out with it," Thomas said.

"We'll go back and forth with something historical, something cultural, something natural, just having something for the kids. We're always getting suggestions and I'll watch what kids are interested in. Our collection is what inspires our programs. If we didn't have such an amazing collection, it would be hard to come up with ideas."

Founded in 1773, The Charleston Museum was America's first museum. Its collection yielded a very wide variety of items and in the early 1800's it focused more on South Carolina's heritage and history.

"The purpose of a museum is to maintain these items and save aspects of our history and culture," Thomas said. "We constantly need to be raising awareness and creating future curators and preservationists. We're creating kids that care about our history and we're creating future generations that after we're gone, will take up the job of keeping all this in a safe place."