 The McRostie Arts Center in Grand Rapids is promoting bonding time with their monthly Family Creates event. Reporter Cheryl Moore shares why parents keep coming back for this week's In Focus. The second Saturday of the month is all about family at the McRostie Arts Center in Grand Rapids. Their free Family Creates events have been going on for about a year and a half now, and it just keeps getting more and more popular as time goes by. What you're seeing is all of the kids working with their parents or guardians or what have you to accomplish the task of making an ornament, whether that's a giant snowflake or it's a mini Santa Claus. The events were created to promote interaction between family members. They work together on whatever the task of the day is, and through that process, they really get to know each other. We started talking about how it gets parents and kids to work together, and we found whether that's a really, really important process when it comes to engaging a creative community is to get parents and kids working together, interacting together, whether it's reading instructions together or really overcoming a challenge together. The activities change each month, so you never know what the challenge of the day will be. We've done anything from planting and painting flower pots to making different projects with butterflies in the summer. Parents are getting to know their kids, but it's also a great opportunity to meet other parents and their kids as well. My favorite part is just having such a fun project set up for us already, that we can come as a family and just dive in, have fun, not worry about a mess, not worry about having to set it up at home and also being able to come with friends and other people in the community. The events show no signs of stopping, and that's why McRosty is looking for new ways to keep them growing. In the future, they're planning to reach out to other artists. We're really excited to collaborate with local artists and start, I don't know, making our activities a little bit more art-centered, art-focused, and traditional-way focused as well. Reporting in Grand Rapids with this week's End Focus, Sheryl Moore, Lakeland News. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.