ESTEVAN - The Souris Valley Museum wrapped up another successful year by hosting a Christmas camp on Dec. 10.
AnneRose Lawrence with the museum said the kids had a lot of fun.
"We learned about all kinds of Christmas traditions from around the world. The kids' favourite was learning about the Christmas gnome in Sweden, and that in the Philippines, they have a Christmas parade with lanterns. So we paraded around the museum with our star lanterns, and the kids thought that was pretty cool," Lawrence shared.
The camp was for three to five-year-olds, and four young explorers partook in the program.
The Christmas camp was the last program offered at the museum for 2021.
The 20th anniversary year saw Souris Valley Museum introducing new programs, birthday parties, museum safaris in the fall and also having a greater reach in their online offerings.
"It has been a very, very successful year. We are very happy to be involved in the community that has given us support throughout the years, between our programs, just general tours, and people coming through the doors," said museum's executive director Mark Veneziano.
"Our huge, biggest success for the 2021 year, which is our anniversary year, is our virtual programs. They have just exploded with just so much interest."
This year, they've had over 4,000 students and teachers take part in the virtual school programs. The interest came from all over the country as they were doing tours for local schools, as well as for groups from Newfoundland to Victoria, B.C.
"We're going to be continuing it on and we've been getting a lot of interest for between January and June for virtual programs as well," Veneziano said.
The Souris Valley Museum will be open until Dec. 17 and then will reopen in the new year on Jan. 4.
Starting in January, they will once again have many programs to offer to the community.
On Jan. 7, they will have Camp New Year, which is for the three to five-year-olds. Then the museum will start up a Little Historians group, which will be running Saturday mornings, from January to March.
The first 2022 installment of the I am series will be on Jan. 14 and will see the I am a Caveman program.
In January they will also be starting the Polar Explorers program.
"It is similar to our safaris that we've been running on Tuesdays, just we're going to run it on Saturdays and it's going to be shorter. So it's only six weeks, running every other Saturday from January to March in the afternoons," Lawrence said.
When winter break rolls around, they will have two camps – morning Winter Wonderland for those three to five and afternoon Fact or Fiction for the six to 10-year-olds.
Besides, the museum is currently working on adult programming.
"We have some new partnerships with a few other organizations that would go towards more of the adult programming. That's something that's in the works right now, and for 2022 we're hoping to have a few programs for adults available during the year as well," Veneziano said.
