Northwoods Adventure: Museum Exhibit Treats Kids To Life On The Lake

With summer just around the corner, it’s time to start thinking about fun on the lake. For this week’s Northwoods Adventure, Clayton Castle took a day trip to Grand Rapids to check out the newest exhibit at the Children’s Discovery Museum in preparation for a summer on the lake.

It was all fun and games on Saturday afternoon on the banks of the Judy Garland Children’s Discovery Museum in Grand Rapids as it opened its newest exhibit titled “Lake Life.”

“Lake Life is our new interactive exhibit for kids,” John Kelsch, Judy Garland Children’s Discovery Museum executive director, said. “It reflects our culture here in Itasca County. We have 1,000 lakes.”

Lake Life had its grand opening on Saturday, which included face painting, prize drawings, and lots of fun for the kids. The new exhibit offers a wide variety of activities for children to discover life on a lake.

“Kids are going to be fishing from the fishing dock,” Kelsch said. “We have all kinds of species of fish, they’ll be testing for water quality, with secchi disks, we have a bog, a log cabin, a tree fort, a boat, so there’ll be all kinds of activities that people do around a lake in the four seasons.”

While one of the many reasons for the “Lake Life” exhibit is to educate, the mission goes beyond learning. It’s also about discovery.

“Well it’s to spark a joy of discovery amongst kids,” Kelsch said. “You know, they asked 50 Nobel Prize winners what was there greatest childhood influence. And most said they had meaningful childhood experiences as a museum because it led them to ask questions and try to answer them.:

Now the exhibit didn’t happen over night. “Lake Life” is the result of months of planning and a collaborative effort among many different people.

“We established an advisory committee here in town,” Kelsch said. “Teachers, retired teachers, and our own education staff and we worked for about nine months to come up with a theme.”

The “Lake Life” exhibit will be a permanent fixture at the museum, lasting at least for the next 10 years.