For those still looking for a summer camp for their kids, try looking to the past.

The Museum of the Cape Fear Historical Complex will be taking campers back to the Victorian Era and teaching them what it was like during that period.
Leslie Leonard, the curator of education for the museum, tells Up & Coming Weekly that this camp will be educational and fun.

“So we’re going to be doing games and activities that children would have done 120 years ago. We’re going to learn about what life was like, what art was like, what architecture, food, what children did for work, whether it be chores at home if they were in middle-class or upper-class families or even doing no work if they were in a lower-income family,” Leonard said.

This museum’s historical artifacts and even parts of the museum itself will be incorporated.
The camp will focus on life locally and not just, in general, Victorian times. This camp will have a direct focus on Fayetteville and the surrounding area.

“We just kind of wanted to do a new thing every year and thought that this one would be fun and appropriate. It’s easy to use what we already have on hand since we have the 1897 house decorated as a Victorian-era home. So we’re able to use that as a backdrop for many of our activities,” Leonard said.
There will be direct learning objectives every day, but Leonard says they just want the kids to have fun while also understanding that we have come a long way over the years.

“We want kids to be able to understand what life was like 100 years ago and how far we’ve come in that time, whether it be through technology, through society and politics or just our everyday way of living,” Leonard said.

The museum will be holding its second camp session in July. The camp will start on July 25 and end on July 29. The camp is only half-days, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. The camp is for kids ages 9 to 12 years old.

There is a limit of 15 campers total for the session.

“We’re doing it a little bit different this year and maxing out the number of campers at 15 where we did 30 before, in the past, because we wanted to make sure that there would be no reason to cancel it this summer,” Leonard said.

In order to register for the camp, parents must come in person to the museum.

They must have the proper paperwork and proof of age for the camper and pay the registration fee.
The registration paperwork can be found at https://museumofthecapefear.ncdcr.gov/events/summer-history-camp-2022-victorian-carolina-0. The museum has received grant funding to run the camp from the Cumberland Community Foundation. So the fee for the camp is only $30 for the whole week.

The CCF is a charitable organization that helps donors make life better in our community.

There are limited spots for the camp, and it is first-come, first-serve. For more registration information, call the museum at 910-500-4243.