Each year the Crooked Creek Chapter of Walleyes Unlimited sponsors Kids Fishing Day for the kids. It’s a day of water safety, guided fishing from a boat, prizes with lunch and more!

Each summer the Club kids have the great opportunity to experience the local swimming pool. We obtain pool passes, help the kids with water safety, swimming, pool rules. They attend 3+ days a week and many participate in swimming lessons. Best way to cool off during our hot summer months.

Endless field trips during the summer to various local business, ranches, nature walks, hiking to Judith Outlook, museums, 4-H exhibits at the Fair, Kendal Ghost Town, Fire Department, etc. Any opportunity to get the kids out we do. Summer

Each year the Lewistown Art Center offers a 3 day camp for our kids to attend. They offer a creative space for our young people to explore and learn the fundamentals of art with wonderful instructors, all the supplies you can imagine, and sample ideas. Perfect spot to let the creativity flow.

Helping Farm in the Dell weed their garden or anything to work with local businesses to teach the Club kids skills and importance of community.

Agriculture is the core of our Central MT community. It is super fun to share and expose our young people to this culture. To have youth better understand the Agriculture Industry, we want to make sure to highlight on various topics to include, but not be limited to: beef production, rangeland education, grains and gardening, the wonderment of the circle of life in Montana. From growing grain, to caring for cattle, to the life cycle of fish, and using the fruits of the land to make pies, jelly.

The Archery camp is a three day progressive learning experience where members are fitted with appropriate bows and arm guards and shown the proper stance and form to shoot.  Students practice shooting and then began working on their groupings of arrows.  On the final day kiddos are able to get pictures of themselves with the groupings they were most proud of! 

A Club Favorite! Youth Empowerment Project (YEP) is a community organization with the purpose of supporting and running annual Youth Horse Camps in central Montana. During each 3-day camp, local youth learn about and interact with horses and other farm animals with activities including horseback riding lessons, collecting eggs from chickens, harvesting produce from the garden, learning to work around cows, and experiential teamwork initiatives with the horses.

Youth attendees of YEP learn to be respectful of others, the animals, and themselves and take on the responsibility of maintaining their own personal safety. They learn about responsibility by helping with feeding, grooming, and exercising the animals. A primary purpose of horse camp is to teach things that are difficult to teach in a regular classroom setting; cooperation, honesty, healthy communication, confidence, frustration tolerance, leadership, relationships, and the value of hard work. Through experience at horse camp, youth learn a lot about themselves and how to function effectively in relationships with others.

The Boys & Girls Club has historically participated in the Central Montana Fair by submitting projects to be on display in the trade center.  For many years Club Kiddos would go to the fair at a given time and work with a fair volunteer to create a flower arrangement or a vegetable creation.  Approximately three years ago staff decided they would prefer to engage the children in whatever fair craft they felt inspired to do utilizing the exhibitor catalogue as a guide for categories to choose from.  Previous years have ranged from clay sculptures, oil pastel creations, or acrylic paintings, but this year rooms chose to do diamond art kits.  Several rooms were able to complete their projects on their own, but with the hustle and bustle of summer, the younger classrooms needed more assistance and were able to circulate through the Ed Director's office to finish their creations.  The youngest classes utilized small diamond art kits of animals, then were asked to draw a background habitat for their diamond art animal.

The kiddos are awarded ribbons and cash prizes through the fair as any other contestant does  $3 for 1st place, $2 for 2nd place and $1 for third.  This year out of our contributions we had approximately 9 winners with a total of $22 given out to our club kids just for having fun and being creative! 

The Boys & Girls Club of Lewistown has been selected by the Montana Alliance of Boys & Girls Clubs to participate in a 23-month grant project funded by the State of Montana Governor’s Office. It is to implement a virtual reality career exploration program featuring the TRANSFR Virtual Reality technology between November 1, 2022 and September 30, 2023.

Career Exploration VR makes it possible to explore careers through first-hand interactive digital experience and to reflect on different possible career paths. Students will show understanding of different career options available to them as well as build a sense of what they do and don’t like about different careers.

Within the headsets, there are six Disciplines and within those, there are 23 Occupational simulations. The six disciplines are Manufacturing, Automotive, Public Safety, Skilled Trades, Warehousing and Storage, and Hospitality and Tourism. The Occupational simulations range from oil change, using a circular saw, all the way to first impressions at a hotel. Each simulation is between 5 and 45 minutes on average.