A fellow homeschooler organized a trip to the OPP Museum for the morning. It was a self guided tour, with many historic exhibits placed around the room. There was a small interactive area with beautiful puppets, forensic clues to decipher crimes, costumes and activity sheets. We found the mug shots from the early 1900's interesting, including crimes for being suspicious, loitering, pick pocketing and nuisance. There was a display about woman entering the provincial police force, at which we learned that they were originally given handbags to carry their guns instead of holsters. How crazy is that! Not surprisingly they didn't find this to be the most practical and in the following years they got rid of the handbags.
We enjoyed looking at the old police cars, trying on costumes and checking out the displays, but there was enough information to look through for about an hour. We took a look around the buildings which also house the school for the provincial branch of the police, the beautiful gardens and anniversary photos.
Joined by some friends we took our lunch down to the lake to eat in the sunshine. The kids loved exploring the shoreline, finding lots of crayfish shells, fish bones, large pond snails, beautiful rocks. The area holds a yearly Perch Festival, during which time participants catch perch, bring them in live to the office beside the lake in exchange for a ticket to enter a draw. We were there long enough to chat at length with the volunteer in charge of taking the live fish and putting them back into the water. The kids got to have a close look at them and then help release them. There are 100 fish released into the water that have tags, when caught the person receives a special price. As soon as we came home the kids put next year's date on the calendar!
While everyone enjoyed the OPP museum, hands down the Perch won out as the hit of the day!
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