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Souris Valley Museum is offering a long-distance program

With school, all programs and events cancelled and children staying home, it may have become quite troublesome for many parents to keep kids, especially the younger ones, occupied.
Souris Valley Museum
Souris Valley Museum is offering a brand new adult-led online program for kids.

With school, all programs and events cancelled and children staying home, it may have become quite troublesome for many parents to keep kids, especially the younger ones, occupied. To help out during these hard times the Souris Valley Museum came up with a brand new online program.

“The reason why we started that program is because we had to cancel a lot of programs at the museum due to the COVID-19 virus (situation), so when I was calling parents to cancel, the parents were asking me if we were going to do anything to help promote things that we do at the museum online,” explained museum’s executive director Mark Veneziano.

The museum took it from there and developed an online program called Inside Blues, which is adult-led initiative for children at home. It is circled around the Canadian history and it will help parents engage and educate their youngsters in the near future.

Once or twice a week there will be a brief history lesson and three to four activities based on what kids have just learned. Veneziano explained that parents and children will have to work together as a family to complete the tasks.

The plan is to try to first offer the program through the museum’s Facebook page, with an option for those parents who are not on social media to email the museum at info@sourisvalleymuseum.ca to request a copy of the lesson. Veneziano said that later in time they may try to also integrate it into their website.

“This is all new to us, so we are learning as we are going. We are open to any suggestions. So if anyone has any suggestions or if there is any other better way of getting material out, it’s definitely something that we would explore,” said Veneziano.

There will be no charge for the program and no sign up is necessary, but Veneziano asked parents to share their results with the museum.

“If you completed your activity, just share it with us on our social media channels or email it to us for those who don’t have social media and we just share it. Just so that way we know that people are using it and it’s just a way to share our creations with one another because during our programs everyone has a chance to show each other what they’ve worked on. That’s our way to show the community what they have done,” explained Veneziano.

They hope to have the first lesson posted already this Wednesday.

At this time the museum is closed and all programs are on pause until further notice. Veneziano said they hope to be able to have their spring break camps if the situation changes and it will be safe to do so. But if that’s not the case, they may also offer some more online activities based on programs planned for the spring-break camps for parents in April. 

“We are just trying to help the community. We understand that it can be difficult sometimes to be inside or trying to find activities for children to do, so we are just trying another way to help,” said Veneziano.

The staff is working, and if anyone has questions they can email the museum.