Museum Family Fun Fest returns for eighth year on Sunday

Submitted by Kerynn Fisher
Phone: (907) 474-6941
06/08/06

The University of Alaska Museum of the North’s annual TOTE Family Fun Fest returns for its eighth year Sunday, June 11 from 1 to 5 p.m., with hands-on activities for kids of all ages under the big-top tent at the UAF Patty Center and a scavenger hunt of the exhibit galleries in the expanded museum.

Under the big-top tent at the UAF Patty Center, kids will enjoy navigating a salmon migration obstacle course, designing a raven’s tail robe, building bug barns, making beaded picture frames, creating sun prints, digging for dinosaurs, making dance fans and learning Eskimo dances with the Pavva Inupiaq dancers. Refreshments will be available from UAF’s Dining Services and Aunt Alice’s Old Time Kettle Corn. UAF’s bear mascot will work the crowds at the event.

In the museum’s galleries, the scavenger hunt will send kids in search of some of the museum objects that inspired the hands-on activities, including an exhibit with newly-hatched salmon, a beaded moosehide photo frame and a Chilkat robe. The answers to the scavenger hunt questions are interspersed throughout the museum’s original Gallery of Alaska, the Alaska Classics Gallery and the newly-opened Rose Berry Alaska Art Gallery.

The museum’s TOTE Family Fun Fest started in 1999 as a fund-raiser for the museum’s expansion and has grown in popularity every year, drawing close to 1,000 children and parents to enjoy a fun-filled day of museum activities. Totem Ocean Trailer Express has served as the lead sponsor of the event since 2000. This year 18 other local businesses support the event as activity and materials sponsors. Admission is free for children 6 and under, $3 for youth 7-17 and $5 for adults, which is a discount from the museum’s regular admission rates.

CONTACT: Kerynn Fisher, UA Museum of the North communications coordinator, at (907) 474-6941 or via email at k.fisher@uaf.edu.