School tour
What it actually looks like
What the children do
A station based morning tour for Kindergarten to Grade 8, built around the BC Curricular Competencies. Kindergarten to Grade 5 classes do four 15 minute activities plus a 30 minute block where they cook bannock in the fireplace and eat the snacks they have brought. Grades 6, 7 and 8 do four 30 minute activities, one of which is bannock plus making camas seed balls. Teachers choose the other activities on the booking form from a list that includes Art Inspired by the Land, butter making, hand washing clothes, Moss Cottage, tracks and scat, the Triangle Island lighthouse, artifact detectives, forestry, spinning and sequencing archival photographs. The museum takes two classes per visit. A visit costs $200. If you are only booking one class, the discount code Single Class brings it to $100, and the code is case sensitive. Chaperones and teachers are not charged. Students should arrive organised into 5 or 6 groups with name tags, and each activity group is kept to a maximum of 8 children.
Move round the museum and grounds in small groups of about eight, spending 15 or 30 minutes at each station. They cook bannock over the fire in the stone fireplace and eat it with jam, shake cream into butter and taste it, wash clothes by hand, press flowers or print tree rings, handle real artifacts and work out what they were for, use hand carders and drop spindles on wool, and walk the Forestry Path outside. In Moss Cottage the younger ones are met by a costumed Aunt Tilly who talks about life in Sooke in 1902.
Good to know
Free parking on site and a mix of indoor rooms and outdoor grounds. Washrooms, an indoor space to eat and what happens in heavy rain are not mentioned on the site, so those are worth a call before you confirm.
Getting there
2070 Phillips Rd, Sooke, BC, V9Z 0Y3