Fantastic attendance and lots of slime at this year’s Winter Break Camp at Boys and Girls Club

 

For the past week, with children off from school and chilly, frigid weather outside, the Whitecourt Boys and Girls Club has been brimming with happy, smiling faces as children of all ages have been able to take part in fun activities as part of the annual Winter Break Camp.

One of the absolute favourite activities the children repeatedly request to do is making slime. The gooey project can come in all colours and was done at both the beginning of the week and at the end. “The kids are obsessed with slime. This is our second time making a different kind of slime this week,” laughed Amy Taggart, Program Manager at the Boys & Girls Club.

This year’s Winter Break Camp was very well attended, with growth from last year.  “We’ve averaged 25 to 27 kids each day. It’s been busy. This time last year we had 15 to 18 children,” said Amy who added that this past summer was their best yet regarding attendance at the club.

On January 1, a flood at the Carlan Resource Centre wreaked havoc and affected all the different groups that utilize the facility, though some fared better than others. For the club, Amy said it was their storage area that was affected. “The stuff that was affected by the flood was our sporting equipment, summer equipment, and seasonal decorations. That was all in our storage. Because it’s a new year and we just finished Christmas, families are going through their toys and rotating them to make room for new Christmas toys. We’re just looking at doing the exact same thing. We like to cycle everything out.”

Amy says they would greatly appreciate donations from the community, especially for the items mentioned above that were affected. One of the items that was really damaged in the flood was helmets. “A lot of our helmets got soaked. We’re drying them out and cleaning them as best we can, but we could really use helmets.”

Coming up in the next little bit, Amy is looking to bring the children tobogganing at Dahl Drive hill providing, of course, that the weather co-operates and brings in snow. As a group, the children are always doing fun things together and Amy and the rest of the staff work hard to provide a safe, supportive space for the children, aged 6 to 11, to spend time outside of school hours.

The Boys and Girls Club runs two programs, one out of the Carlan Resource Centre and one at St. Mary School. Students from St. Mary School can stay at the school until 6 p.m. and have fun in the gymnasium. “The program that runs from after school until 6 p.m. could use more kids. We would like to see the attendance grow down there,” said Amy.