Adventures in the great Midwest! Part 6

It's time for another adventure! I hope your week was full of fun and excitement and of course learning. Isn't it amazing how quickly time flies? I am making it a point, that no matter how quickly life goes by, I want to savor moments. It is my goal to learn something new everyday and with that I love for my children to learn new things daily as well. We took this adventure to the Field Museum in Chicago, where we are of course members. There are plenty of things and exhibits to see here, but our priority was the dinosaurs, as we were ready to get into more detail on our dinosaur unit.

I arrived prepared and ready, with our fun dinosaur flashcards and fact book, so that the kids could read about any additional research needed and also play a fun game of Dino Hunt, by finding a dinosaur at the museum and looking through their cards or book to see which one it is. We would then move to one side and read what the exhibit said and read the information on our cards and book! 

They have an AWESOME 3-D movie that tells the story of the T-Rex SUE, which can be found at this museum. SUE is the most complete T-REX in the World. This is a FANTASTIC movie and even my youngest loved it.

There is a large hands-on play lab at this museum and their favorite part of course was digging for dinosaur bones! They absolutely loved this so much, that I just cannot wait to introduce them to the activity I have planned for our upcoming Dino Week!! Yay! We will be digging for our own fossils! 

How perfect is it, that they even had these AWESOME canvas totes for members yesterday?! It is so nice and sturdy, that it has become home to the books and items for our dinosaur study, so that we can transport it all to the library for our lesson!  All in all an awesome museum and we can't wait to go back to look at the new whale exhibit!!

Take a minute to visit the hostesses!
Your hosts are Michelle from Heartfelt Balance Handmade Life 

Jenn from Coolest Family on the Block

Bernadette from Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas

Michelle from MichellesCharmWorld (YAY ME!)






Come on and join us! Snag our button and link up! Don't forget to put the button in your post and to also visit your hostesses! Enjoy the Summer!

Missed my other posts?
WEEK 1 The Waterpark!
WEEK 2 The Zoo!
WEEK 3 Berry Picking
Week 4 Splash Park
Week 5 Children's Museum

Exploring in Nature

After a full day of staying inside and studying, we wanted to do something fun! We opened up our Nature Guide and picked a page at random and then picked a date. We ended up with a hunt for wild mushrooms! We packed into the van and headed off to the nature center in search of some mushrooms.

On my last trip to the science store in town, I picked up these specimen dishes, which were perfect for this up close look into the different types of mushrooms we found! I used the green coasters to add a little color to the background, so the mushrooms were not the same color as the tray! (Coasters from Ikea .49).

Placing mushrooms in a variety of containers, allowed each child to explore on their own time and not have to wait for their turn. This definitely helped the project last longer.

I set up the station on a 'tray' which is really just an old wooden puzzle frame that had lost all it's pieces! We also used large magnifying glasses and tweezers from the Teacher Store. Everything had it's own place where it belonged and this was perfect for the kids to realize that everything had to go back where it came from.

The kids easily played in this Science Station for over an hour. They traded samples, broke off pieces and even looked up information! It was an AWESOME learning experience.

Afterwards, I handed this worksheet and had them fill it out (I helped the youngest one!) and it was AWESOME reading what each child thought of the day we had! Hands On makes such a difference, than just seeing pictures of mushrooms in a book!

What do you like to do out in nature??

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