photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

A Ballard Community Center student takes up a post at the coloring table at Watkins Museum of History. The museum and center are partnering this year to offer Ballard Center students their own weekly time slot of educational games and crafts through June and July.

The Watkins Museum of History and the Ballard Community Center have partnered for a program featuring educational games and crafts for children one day a week through most of the summer.

Every Wednesday in June and July, Ballard Center staff will bring a group of 5- and 6-year-old students to the museum for an hour of activities, themed around the colors of the rainbow.

A group of six of those children was present for this week’s activities, based around the color orange. They participated in craft stations where they made cup games based on the game of basketball and paper airplanes on orange paper. On the other side of the room, some children played a game of what museum staff called “grace hoops,” a traditional game where a hoop bound with silk or ribbon is tossed between two participants and caught using a pair of sticks positioned like open scissors.

photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

A pair of Ballard Center students play a game of “grace hoops,” where the object is to toss a hoop back and forth and catch it with a pair of sticks held like an open scissors.

Games are open to the general public from 11 a.m. to noon each Wednesday. The museum’s director of engagement and learning, Will Haynes, told the Journal-World the museum had already offered the program to the general public for a number of years. Haynes said the partnership with Ballard has been a successful one thus far, offering the center’s students an opportunity to learn outside of the traditional classroom setting.

On top of the partnership, which the museum hopes is fruitful for many summers to come, Haynes said busing Ballard students to the museum through First Student bus services wouldn’t have been possible without a grant from the Douglas County Community Foundation.

photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

A Ballard Center student pauses for a moment before preparing to throw a paper airplane at the target pictured behind him.