I love exploring my city and it's surroundings. I feel so blessed to have so many beautiful places at my finger tips to explore with my family. One thing I have always wanted to do was get a membership for the Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG). I can happily say we are now members! They have some amazing options for different memberships and I highly recommend checking them out. We chose the Family-Dual Plus membership. This way my mom and I are both primary card holders and we can each bring a guest with us per visit. We get 2 parking passes and the kids are always free. It is nice that I am able to bring a guest with me so if Chris doesn't want to come with us to something we can take a friend or another family member with us. I also love that we get parking passes because we love going to Hendrie Park when the weather is nice to feed the birds and chipmunks!
The RBG is somewhere that I have always loved visiting. In the spring the flowers are absolutely beautiful and they always have great events going on throughout the year. It also became a special place for us when we had our birth announcement photo with Santa taken when we were pregnant with Lily. This was our first trip to the RBG as a family of four and I have to say I think everyone really enjoyed themselves! This visit we were specifically going to see the Spider's Alive exhibit. In this exhibit you can explore the amazing adaptions and behaviours of over 17 species of spiders and other many-legged creatures, with special events and daily programs for all ages. This exhibit runs from January 19 - April 14th. So you still have lots of time to go and check it out! It would be a great day trip, check out the exhibit and then take a beautiful walk around the gardens. Let the kids run free and burn off some energy.
I was very impressed with the layout and accessibility of the exhibit. All of the displays were big, bright and easy to read. They had stools available at each display so that kids could stand up and be able to easily see the spiders. There was lots of space for moving around so you did not feel crowded. We attended the event on a Saturday and arrived around 10:00am. It was not busy which was nice however, it did get quite busy over lunch time. I do recommend attending earlier in the day if you are going on a weekend. I also recommend checking out the programming schedule prior to going so that you don't miss out on any of the interactive activities available.
One of my concerns was that the exhibit would be too advanced for Lily and she would not be interested. However, this worry was quickly washed away after we arrived. Lily had so much fun and enjoyed a lot of the activities. She loved looking at the different spiders and learning some fun facts! They had books available that you could go on a scavenger hung while you were walking around and learn more about the spiders. They also had a large spider in the exhibit that the kids could crawl on and play. Out of the programming they had available we attended two of the shows. We saw the Puppet Show where you can watch animal friends tell their own tales and learn what makes them so special. It was the perfect length (about 15 minutes) for younger kids to stay engaged. The other show we attended was Meet the Critters. They brought out various bugs and had a camera that they placed the bug under that connected to a TV so you could see up close. They provided lots of education about the various critters and at the end of the show they allowed people to come up and see the critters closer.
The whole event was very interactive and educational. Whether you are checking out the spider exhibit or the rest of the gardens you are bound to have a fun filled day at the Royal Botanical Gardens. I definitely deem it fun for all ages!
