Week 8

This past week has been great. I have been working in the First Colony camp for incoming first and second graders and even got to teach Thursday and Friday. The kids were so much fun to be with, but definitely energy taxing! I only worked with them for five hours each day with another teacher, so I can't imagine a full day by yourself. But overall, it was a ton of fun. The kids were so enthusiastic about everything we were doing and loved being in the museum. 

In camp we taught the kids about excavating, soil layers, and artifacts. We had a great discussion on why archeologists cannot dig up treasure and keep it for themselves to get rich. The campers did a lot with looking at fossils and using the same tools that real archeologists use at excavation sites. The campers also went outside and dug their own mini excavation sites and one of the campers actually found five dollars that he was allowed to keep. The first colony camp also talked about St. Augustine, the Spanish and Native American influence that is in Florida today, and preservation of artifacts. I have absolutely no background in archeology at all so I learned a lot in my research before teaching the camp which was fun. 

Below are pictures of the mini archeology sites that the campers made.

Week 6

This week has been crazy busy. I feel like all I've been doing is running around nonstop. This past Friday Deanna, Brooke, and I went to an outreach event that the city of Gainesville was hosting for the opening of a new road and the development and improvement of Gainesville. The FLMNH has a touch table (meaning everyone can touch everything on the table) filled with turtle shells, huge conch shells, Megalodon shark teeth models, and other things kids could look at. Our job was to ask people if they had ever been to the museum and to engage people and answer any questions they had. It was pretty fun- a lot of kids were so amazed by how big a lot of the artifacts were and got so excited when we told them that they were allowed to touch everything. 

The rest of the week has been more of the same. Helping out with summer camp, working on my project, and preparing for future weeks camp mainly. This week I am also the supply person for camp, meaning I have to put away all the supplies from this week and prepare the supplies for next week's camp, but that mostly doesn't start until the end of the week so I've just been reading up on what is expected of me. I'm definitely looking forward to next week, and things slowing down a little bit since there won't be any school.  

Week 5!

 

 

This week has been crazier than all the last. Summer Camp is here!! Over the weekend has all been intense prep for Summer Camp to begin. I put together field guides/journals for the campers to fill out throughout their week of camp, I helped to supply the teachers with the materials they need for their activities, and I helped to get the actual classrooms set up. Also, this past Sunday the Museum was crazy busy (probably because school is out) and 3 volunteers called in sick so I had to help with checking people before they go into paid exhibits, and listening to the radio to see if the front desk needed me.

 

Most importantly, I got my project for the summer! I am going to be planning a program for Girl Scouts Explore in the Museum. It is going to be focused on butterflies and lepidoptera. I'm really excited about this, I am all for girls getting exposure to science and being able to introduce them to different aspects of science that they haven't seen before. (Side note- LEGO is launching women in science figures which I think is awesome! http://www.buzzfeed.com/rossalynwarren/lego-to-launch-female-scientist-figures-thanks-to-an-online). So just to begin diving in on that I have been reading the past Girl Scout Programs other people have done (Botany, Palaeontology, and Archeology), as well as the Butterfly Exhibit Guide to get an idea of the type of information that I want to include in my program.



This week at FLMNH has all been in preparation for the summer camps that begin next week. 

On Sunday I helped with the JV (junior volunteer) training. The JVs will be volunteering in all parts of the museum, including engaging children, helping with the summer camps, and giving tours. I helped to give an information session in the JVs engaging museum visitors in the exhibits and another information session on engaging visitors using the Discovery Carts, which are these carts filled with models and interactive things kids and adults can touch and see that go along with various exhibits. The training overall went well, and I actually saw a couple of students that I taught last semester which was pretty cool. They were definitely surprised to see me. 

On Monday I helped take inventory and prepare the summer camp classroom. This including making sure each camp had all of the materials they needed, as well as replacing a lot of things that were old and gross. It also involved going through and organizing a lot of cabinets with random things inside and trying to get the room in some kind of order. Callum and I found all of this all food in some of the cabinets and has to sort through it all and throw out all of the expired food... there was a ton of it from 2006 and 2007- so gross (see pictures below). 

Things have been really busy lately because everyone is running around trying to make sure everything gets done before camp starts. I'm excited for the campers to actually be here, although I'm sure that will bring a lot of chaos too!