Activities are getting underway at the Souris Valley Museum.
It's shaping up to be a busy summer as the museum will be hosting a number of activity days and hold family days every Saturday, all summer.
Pioneer Fun Day is this Saturday and it gives people an opportunity to step back a few generations and see what things were like without some of the tools we enjoy today. Katrina Howick, the museum curator, is organizing each of the activities with her team of interns who will have a hand in running them.
The pioneer day will feature lots of activities like crafts and wooden toy making, while also featuring tours and a schoolhouse re-enactment. There will be a fundraiser barbecue in the afternoon and people are encouraged to dress up in period attire.
"It's just a good day to come out and enjoy what the museum has to offer," said Howick.
The schoolhouse replica also contains many artifacts today's children haven't had a lot of experience with, like the strap.
"It's those things that modern day children don't have to deal with. It gives people an appreciation of some of the comforts of modern life. There are things they had to do to get (by). It's inspiring."
Pioneer Family Day will showcase technology from earlier periods, things that may have been considered state-of-the-art just a few generations ago. One thing Howick said they will be showing off is the cook car. She explained that the car was a fast-food restaurant that pulled up to you.
"It would go around to the workers in the fields and they could sit in the car and eat their lunch."
Hands on History days are every Saturday beginning in July and run to the end of August. These days will allow participants to really get into the spirit of history by learning how many chores were done.
Howick and her staff will be working through different activities with children, showing how things were down in days gone by, like butter churning and ice cream and toffee making.
While the Pioneer Fun Days are more of a drop-in and participate kind of set-up, Hands on History is more of an activity, group-based event. Howick said those days are more linear, and the pioneer days are more like a free flow.
There are also two pioneer day camps scheduled, one in July and one in August. The camps are each a week long and expose those children attending to some of the chores they may have had to do years ago through crafts and heritage games. There may also be mine tours that would give a good historical back drop to this region.
All money raised from these events goes to supplies for the activities and the rest goes back to the museum's collection.
