After a busy summer at the Moose Jaw Western Development Museum, new fall programming begins today.  

Today is Grandparents Day at the museum, the first event of its kind at the Moose Jaw WDM location. 

Carla Rasmussen, education and public programs coordinator says the event is borrowed from Moose Jaw's sister museum in Swift Current where the event has been quite popular for a number of years. The day includes a self-guided tour for intergenerational visitors to enjoy together. 

"You visit most of the galleries, and there's questions in this booklet," Rasmussen said. "A lot of it is reminisence, memories, comparing the way things were when a person grew up to the way that they are now."

Although the day is specifically named for grandparents, Rasmussen said the point of the activities is to encourage the younger and older generations to chat about what life was and is like now, whether you're related or not. 

"It doesn't necessarily have to be something done with grandparents and grandchildren. As long as it's a sort of intergenerational sort of visit, come with somebody that's not your same age, you can compare what life was like."

Included in the booklet are questions such as: what chores did you do when you were growing up? What time of day did you wake up? Were you on a farm? What was your first car? And more. 

Rasmussen said that Grandparents Day will be an excellent lead into senior's week at the end of the month. The museum will be hosting a senior's tea on Sept. 28. 

"It's kind of a laid back, informal thing. We've got a little program, we bring out some of our hands-on artefacts for this program. It touches on the same themes as the grandparents day booklet, so we have artefacts from school days, farming, a little bit about the great depression, when electricity came to Saskatchewan, and we encourage the participants to share their memories or their experiences as we talk about these different artefacts. and they have a chance to hold them and handle them and pass them around the room too."

Today the museum is open from 9 am until 5 pm. 

No details could be provided yet, but Rasmussen said that in place of the regular Halloween event in October, the museum will be doing a "different sort of mystery" so stay tuned for more information.