The Town of Fort Frances and the Fort Frances Museum and Cultural Centre have great plans for the summer.
Most of the programming will take place in July and August. The Town of Fort Frances will run day camps for all eight weeks out of the Memorial Sports Complex. Registration opened May 16 and many of the spaces are already taken. Some limited spaces are still available and if parents are interested they should contact the Sports Complex to see if there is space for their child. Lifeguard Supervisor Rebecca Armit is also in charge of the camps. She says they have a lot of fun things in store.
“Within the eight weeks each week is a theme week,” Armit said. “We have some ranging from arts and crafts, cooking and baking, around the world, decades, Hollywood/movie stars, mad scientists and then our final week will wrap it up and include everything.”
Campers will do activities based around those themes. Crafts as well as potential field trips and other activities like a weekly visit to the Fort Frances Library Technology Centre and the Museum.
Museum Curator Kayliegh Speirs says there will be lots of different options for kids and a few for adults as well. One of the activities the museum will have is weekly Square Days.
“We will be doing our Square Days again,” Speirs said. “And it’s every Tuesday from 1:00 p.m. until 3:00 p.m. and there will be some programming and have different theme. It will be open to anybody and will take place in the Rainy Lake Square.”
Square Days will cost $5 per child and the themes are still to be decided.
Another event the museum plans to bring back during the summer is its Night At the Museum events.
“We’re also bringing back our popular Night at the Museum event,” Speirs said. “Basically it’s an evening event running probably from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. an it’s a whole night of fun programming. Typically we watch a movie, there will be flashlight tours of the exhibits, scavenger hunts and a whole mix of things with snacks and stuff.”
Speirs says the museum hopes to host two of these events one in July and another in August the events will be for kids ages 4-12 and cost $10.
The museum is also planning two week-long day camps for the first time. One week in July and another in August Speirs says.
“It will be the first time the museum’s ever done week-long day camps,” Speirs said. “Each day will have some sort of different theme. Our camps will have a big educational component to them as well as getting kids out and about and moving.”
Speirs thinks that events at the museum can play a big role in kids learning about history of the world around them.
“It’s so important for people to know their own stories,” Speirs said. “And know the stories and the histories of the lands that they live on. Both the physical landscape but also the people hwo have come before, for so many reasons. Fort Frances has some really, really interesting history, and that’s definitely a lot of the stuff that we’ll try to tie into all of our programming.
Speirs says campers will even have an opportunity to visit the museum’s collections of artifacts. The camp will also be for kids 4-12. Preliminary dates for the camps are July 18-22 and Aug. 15-19. The two camps will be different so children can attend both without repeat programming. The registration fee for a week of camp will be $125 for the first child and $115 for additional children. People can contact the museum for further information.
