Freedom Boat Club Lake George has partnered with the Children’s Museum at Saratoga on a new boating and fishing exhibit.
The Saratoga Lake – Let’s Go Boating exhibit will be an interactive, kid-friendly, and colorfully immersive exhibit. It is designed to help young children utilize play as a means to enhance their social and emotional development, as well as learn how to communicate, observe and problem solve with one another as they navigate their way through the exhibit, officials said.
The Saratoga Lake exhibit joins long-time museum favorites like the theater, trolley, firetruck, diner, grocery store and bandstand, as well as another brand new exhibit, the barn.
The exhibit space will be on the first floor, where the current Congress Park/Saratoga Lake is located.
The exhibit will have a grand opening on at 10:30 a.m. Monday, April 13.
The improved exhibit offers children an opportunity to take a boat ride fueled by their imagination as they discover different animals and plants in their natural habitat. To further enhance the exhibit’s educational value, additional interactives are being constructed for visitors to engage with as they discover life on the lake.
Included in the Saratoga Lake exhibit is a revamped rowboat utilizing a reclaimed steering wheel and throttle control, an interactive knot-tying panel featuring four common boating knots, an interactive fishing game and a Life Jacket station.
Freedom Boat Club owners Matt and Rebecca O’Hara have been members of the museum for several years and brought the idea to museum staff last year.
“We are frequent visitors of the museum with our 4- and 2-year-old daughters and after we’ve seen their joy interacting with the steering wheels and controls on our club boats, we thought it would be a great addition to enhance the interactivity of the boat exhibit at the Museum,” said Rebecca. “We were thrilled when the museum team was open to the idea of working with us to add not only controls to the boat but significantly upgrading the space by adding the fishing and knot tying panels.”
The couple also feels that the exhibit, and future programming designed around it, will allow visitors to have more hands-on experience with the joys of boating, the value of boat safety, and the importance of learning about and respecting the ecosystems around the region’s lakes.
“We strongly believe that time spent boating as a family is among the best quality time we have with our kids and want to continue making boating more accessible in the area” said Matt.
According to museum board president David Martin, “This is a special year for the museum. We are celebrating 30 years of service to the community. This exhibition marks the beginning of a year of new opportunities that the museum has planned for our visitors, members and community stakeholders. We are profoundly grateful for the donors and volunteers who have made and continue to make this museum a valuable resource for children in the greater Capital Region.”
Freedom Boat Club is the nation’s oldest and largest boat club, with over 2,000 boats at 215 club locations operating in 31 states, Canada, and Europe. For more information about Freedom Boat Club in Lake George, call (845) 642-0201 or visit www.freedomboatclub.com
Founded in 1990 by community parents and educators, the Children’s Museum at Saratoga is dedicated to creating an interactive community that inspires curiosity, sparks imagination and nurtures discovery.
