Museum Field Trip

To finish up our rock unit, we planned a trip to the Museum of Natural Science.   They have a really wonderful rock and mineral display, which includes amazing jewelry.  When we arrived, we ran into one of the museum employees who we met during a previous visit to see the Civil War exhibit.  He showed us the original 13th amendment and a bullet from the Civil War.  He was passionate about Abraham Lincoln and made it fun for the kids.  So, he remembered us and wanted us to see the new dinosaur exhibit.  Of course the boys thought that sounded great so we followed our tour guide.  He even gave the boys each a shark tooth to remember our visit.

 

The exhibit has all the dinosaurs on low to medium platforms and the first thing we saw when we turned around was Justin scrambling up on the platform with the dinosaur!  The security guards weren't any more observant than we were!

 

Our new friend explained that we could figure out which dinosaurs are real fossils and which are casts (of real fossils housed in other museums).  If the metal frame is on the inside, it's cast, and if the frame is on the outside, it's fossil.  And the museum has several dinosaurs that are more than 80% real fossils.

There was a great part in the dinosaur area that fit our mission of the day: a petrified wood display.

And this gigantic ancient armadillo relative made me laugh!

Here is the woolly mammoth.  They set up these funny displays with the fossils.  Here a mammoth "pushed" a caveman off a cliff.  See him dangling/falling above my head?

We also visited a special exhibition of the Medici family collection, including lots of cameos.  By this time, Justin was tired.  The dinosaur were way more walking than I had planned and I didn't bring a strolled for Justin.  Poor guy was pooped!  So he sat and looked at the little video presentation.  He looked so cute sitting there!  He looked like he actually was involved in the display.  Um, he wasn't really...

 

We did make it to the gem area finally.  It was very dimly lit so it didn't make for good pictures.  We looked around and Justin sat on the floor in various states of "sprawl".  We moved Justin from place to place as we moved through the exhibit.  Fortunately it wasn't very crowded.  It was amazingly beautiful though.  Seeing the way the minerals form into such brilliant patterns and shapes was stunning.  I cannot help but praise God as the Master Designer and Creator of such beauty.

 

This is the lobby where they have a geode split open with amethysts inside.  You can see another one in the gift shop behind us.  Justin walked over to it to touch the inside and he hit the window and bounced off!  It was so funny!

 

Justin was very tired by this time, so he rested while Travis checked out the planet display and the sun dial.

It was a super fun family outing (Randy was the photographer, I realized I didn't get any shots with him actually IN the picture...)  Travis learned a lot about rocks and so did I.  I think that might be my favorite part of homeschooling: learning along with the kids.   There will be lots more of that in the years to come!