February 11, 2013
Chronicle Excerpt
The children of Lewis County have a new place to play — at least for the next six months.
The Discover! Children’s Museum opened Saturday and logged more than 200 visitors in its first two hours of operation. Organizers see it as a strong start to an experimental pilot project by a Chehalis civic group designed to see if the Lewis County area can sustain the support needed for an educational playground in the Mint City.
For Saige Mortensen, a 4-year-old from Curtis, “discover” was indeed the right word as she explored the “Dino Dig.” She was having a hands-on — and feet-on — experience as she perched inside the elevated sandbox, excavating fake dinosaur fossils with her grandmother, Giselle Murphy of Onalaska.
One of the volunteers running the children’s museum soon arrived and said that, while visitors weren’t allowed to climb into the sandbox, Saige’s need to climb inside the box was a demonstration that the ongoing construction of the museum should include a stepstool or bench for younger children at the Dino Dig.