The Rossland Museum kicked off its summer events this week with the first of eight kids’ camps and an environmental education and concert series.
Monday was the first day of the weeklong Earth Explorers kids camp. Campers learn about earth science through exercises and crafts, like building eco domes for caterpillars, water wheels, solar ovens, and a volcano.
“We’ve got six kids in this camp,” says Sandra Balentine, assistant at the museum, “which is just about the perfect number because we’ve just got myself leading it, so we wanted to keep the groups quite small so the kids get a lot of individual attention. “
There are three other camp themes for the summer. Each day at the Imagination and Innovation camp will be based around different children’s books like Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and video games like Minecraft. Pioneer Camp will teach kids more about the history of Rossland, give them the chance to pan for gold, and see the Gold Fever Follies. For the budding scientist, there’s S.T.E.M. Camp, where they can learn about introductory robotics, and build motorized objects and catapults. Each camp is a week long and will run twice during the summer.
So far, campers are enjoying themselves. “I think that it was awesome, and I think that all the crafts were awesome,” said seven-year-old camper Delilah Watts. Lily Kompass, age 9, says her favourite part was “making the eco domes. The baby caterpillars are cute!”
The museum also offers a summer event for the whole family. Where the Wild Things Are is an evening of educational fun and music that kicked off on Tuesday. Each week will feature a guest speaker who will teach six to twelve year olds about science and nature. The first speaker was Richard Fazakarley who gave a talk on beavers, and showed the kids how to make paper bag beaver puppets.
Once the kids were done with their crafts, they were free to chase gofers and hula hoop while their parents prepared dinner on the barbeque and Tim Bourchier played a selection of popular songs on the acoustic guitar.
The event was meant to be set around the fire pit, but due to fire bans, that wasn’t possible.
Future guest speakers will include someone from the Kootenay Association for Science and Technology and children’s writer Darcee O’Hearn. Ron Holliday and Sparky Steeves are set to provide musical entertainment.