Midland Day camp spurs cultural appreciation, innovation, and preservation

Designing a dream house, making a cardboard chair that a 200-pound person can sit in, putting on a puppet show, and holding a tarantula may sound like shows on the Discovery Channel.

But they're actually some of the activities that children in the Discovery Square Camp get to experience during their five-day immersion tour of five culturally significant sites around Midland. The camp, hosted by the Alden B. Dow Home & Studio, Aug. 9–13, takes children on a five-day walk through the area known as Discovery Square, a term coined by Dow, an architect of world renown who studied under Frank Lloyd Wright.

Discovery Square includes institutions designed by Alden B. Dow that help highlight the community's natural, artistic, literary, architectural, and scientific assets, says Regina Curtis, communication and public relations director for the Alden B. Dow Home & Studio. During the five-day camp, children 8 to 11 are introduced to the Alden B. Dow Home & Studio, Dow Gardens and the Whiting Forest, the Grace A. Dow Memorial Library, Midland Center for the Arts and the Michigan Molecular Institute.

"It's not so much about the buildings as what happens in those buildings," says Curtis, who also does tours for the Alden B. Dow Home & Studio, a designated a National Historic Landmark.

Children learn how to draw a dream house and how to build a sturdy cardboard chair and decorate it with recycled and found objects. The activities are meant to nurture the creative process, and also to spur preservation of these community assets.

"It also teaches them the basics about architecture," Curtis says. "We're teaching kids to keep their eyes open to new ideas. Just because it looks different doesn't mean it's not possible."

This year's camp session filled up in May, but parents can get their kids on a waiting list for next year by contacting the Alden B. Dow Home & Studio at 989-839-2744.

Writer: Jenny Cromie
Source: Alden B. Dow Home & Studio, Regina Curtis