The Museum offered its first-ever licensed summer camp for four weeks in July, inviting a maximum of 20 campers (entering grades K–2) each week to explore and enjoy Museum exhibits and supervised activities. The Explore It Summer Camp was an overwhelmingly positive experience for our campers. Fifty-three campers filled 80 spots across four weeks, 20 spots of which were filled by full-scholarship recipients—thanks to the Fish Foundation. Campers from a variety of ages and backgrounds were able to make friends and memories after a year of limited social interaction.
Camp was staffed by a combination of Museum education and visitor experience staff members, and a Boston Pic program volunteer! Explore It Summer Camp took over the corner of the first floor of the Museum, including the Blue Room, Green Room, and an outdoor tented space in the Group Welcome courtyard. Campers and staff formed their own “bubble” each week, and our staff especially enjoyed the chance to spend an entire week, and often multiple weeks, with the same children.
Similar to April Adventure Week, there were STEAM activities for the participants including LEGO workshops, science experiments, splatter painting and art activities, and much more. Campers made multiple visits to Martin’s Park each week, went fishing in Fort Point Channel with Save the Harbor, and even got to avail of an extended care hour from 4-5pm. July’s weather allowed for a lot of outdoor programming for campers in our Group Welcome courtyard such as water play, exploring ice, fun with shaving cream, and more! The camp day always started with fun activities, songs, freeze dances, and ice breaker games. The Blue and Green Rooms had never looked more like a kindergarten classroom—filled with toys, books, tiny tables, wall decorations and art displays, area rugs with different activities, and you could often find a group of children huddled around a counselor for a story time.
Museum counselors received overwhelming positive feedback for developing and running an extremely engaging, varied, never-a-dull-moment camp experience as a post-camp survey indicated, with the Camp scoring a positive rating of 4.96 on a scale of 1–5.
