A Night at the Museum

Guest Blogger time. Taking over for a short post about the visit Natalie and I made to the Witte Museum last week. The GT (Gifted-Talented) program at Natalie's elementary school makes an overnight visit to the Witte Museum during the 4th grade year. The GT program is small enough that this year 3rd and 5th graders were invited too. This is a great, fun, educational program that involves walking through whichever special traveling exhibit the museum has going as well as other special group experiences. (Un)Fortunately, we couldn't stay overnight due to some early morning soccer games. Natalie would have loved the overnight stay, but the other group there was a group of cub scouts that was rather wild and unruly. I am certain not much sleeping would have happened. According to the schedule, we stayed for all of the major parts of the visit. I forgot the good camera so I had to settle for cell phone pictures.

We were split into two groups, the school children in one group and the cub scouts in the other and then began our journey. Our first stop was to the special exhibit, right now that exhibit is "Darwin: How One Man's Theory Turned the World on its Head" This is a fantastic exhibit that describes much of Darwin's journey, making it clear how much work and thought went into his research. It was interesting to see how the children could all find different parts of the exhibit that they were generally excited about and interested in. All of the children enjoyed the short video on natural selection, mostly due to the discussion of special poisonous salamanders and snakes resistant to the poison that like to eat them. Yes, they are children, poisonous salamanders are apparently very "cool." Natalie enjoyed most of the exhibit, even stopping to read or interact with different parts of it.

The next stop for our group was something that Alex did for his Witte Museum visit too, Tom, one of the museum staff that has been there for a long time, discussed natural selection with the children and showed them various animals. He talked about habitats, and how different animals fit into their habitat, and then, in a high point for the children, he brought out several animals for the children to touch. The animals included several snakes, a tortoise, a few rats, and a madagascar hissing cockroach. My lovely little girl was happy to touch or pet ALL of them. Including the rats and cockroach that sent several parents running. It is probably a good thing Melanie wasn't there, possibly even a good thing I only have these poor quality cell phone photos.
Natalie told me a story about a parent we know and how this parent scared a teacher at her school with a hissing cockroach during a science class a few weeks before. Clearly, all of the children thought the story was hilarious. I think the teacher in question might not be so impressed. It was wonderful to see how curious and involved Natalie can be, and how she hasn't developed the fear of snakes, rats, and creepy-crawlies that most people have by the time they are adults.

The final part of our visit was a larger group exercise to teach about habitats and animals and how they are involved. Both groups were mixed up and then the staff member picked various children to be deer, water, food, and trees (environment). The deer then had to tag one each of the water, food, and trees to "survive." Water and food could only be tagged once, then they had to sit down. If the deer couldn't tag food and water in the right amount of time they would "starve." It was a very nice, fun exercise that made it very clear to the children that there has to be a balance between food, water, and the population of the animals in the area. It also had the kids running around a bit before it was time to settle down for movies and bedtime. It was also impossible to get pictures due the room being a bit dark and the children running all over the place. Natalie and I left before the movies (it was already 10:30PM) and headed home to get ready for a weekend of soccer games.