Underground at Kalamazoo Nature Center

After our visit to Kalamazoo Valley Museum this week, we stopped by Kalamazoo Nature Center. We've been to the Nature Center numerous times and are members, so it's nice to just go for a couple of hours. I actually thought this was a great pair of activities, with the two venues about 10 minutes apart. We made lunch and ate in the van, so we were ready to rumble once we arrived.

Here are posts from previous visits:
Kalamazoo Nature Center Natural Playground
A Fall Visit
Winter Wildflower Hike
Our First Visit

Kalamazoo had more snow and ice than we have in the Michiana area right now. It was gorgeous--I wish my pictures could capture the beauty better! 

Fossil Park

We recently headed out to Sylvania, Ohio to visit the Fossil Park. One of the librarians mentioned a place to dig for fossils from the Denovian time period. I never found the same place, but I did find this neat park where we could dig through the dirt for fossils for free. It took us just about 2 hours to drive from the northern part of Elkhart County. Fossil Park is open for part of the year. We arrived early in the morning and were the first ones there. Trucks bring loads of dirt in from a nearby quarry. The quarry is interested in what's on the other side of this section of fossils. They don't mind sharing the fossils, which is great for us! The park system there has several helpful downloads to add to the learning experience, such as a fossil lesson plans, Denovian coloring sheets, what can I find handouts, a field guide, and an egg carton template. We've used egg cartons for rock collections before. It's a fun way to organize and collect treasures. The boys have a couple of small fossil collections that we purchased, but now they can add their own finds to their collections.

Michiana Gem & Mineral Society Show

This afternoon, I took the younger boys over to the Michiana Gem & Mineral Society Show at the South Bend Fair Grounds. I haven't ever really been to one of these, but enjoy geology and earth sciences, so thought I'd check it out. Plus, it was the 50th year anniversary!

Story of my life these days . . .  the child below did NOT want to go. But we had a great time together and said he really enjoyed it later. My advice--push through. They just don't know they'll like it yet, but they will once they are there. :-) He was so interested in everything!

There were several educational displays of personal collections of club members. These were neat to look at. We could see textures, colors, shapes, and more! 

 

Nature Club: Fossils

The 6-9 year old Nature Club at Woodlawn Nature Center met again this last week. After reading a few books about fossils, examining fossils from the museum collection, and talking about the fossilization process, we hit the trails to find future fossils in waiting . . .

I'd noticed this dead opossum out by the road before we went in, so talked about what would happen for it to turn into a fossil over time.

One of the children found this small bone and we discussed how that might become a fossil over time, too.

We had looked at petrified wood inside and found plenty of wood outside . . . while we still looked for potential fossils, the children also just started exploring!

We found a downed log across the trail, so the girls helped move it out of the way.

There are at least 2 stumps turned into chairs with a footrest the children enjoyed using.

There is something about walking over big huge logs they particularly enjoy!

Inside, we checked out more fossils in the Nature Center's collection.

Then it was time for our edible craft . . . we excavated chocolate chip cookies!

Such attention to detail! We discussed how fossils are found and preserved.

Then we started making modern day fossils . . . sand, dirt, plaster of paris, and water.

We discussed the many layers and years it takes to make fossils and put items to find in our modern fossils, such as shells, rocks, and plastic dinosaurs. 

These will make great digging kits at home! My kids have always liked excavating similar digging kits, so this might be a more economical method that also helps them enjoy more of the process. 

Love fossils? Woodlawn Nature Center will host a huge fossil exhibit from Paleo Joe opening in November 2013. 

The Dino Store

This afternoon my youngest two sons and I visited The Dino Store in South Bend this afternoon. At our weekly nature preschool, we've been studying about fossils and dinosaurs recently. I realized we were just a few blocks from the store, so thought we'd stop in.

I found an article about The Dino Store online. The owner of the South Bend Chocolate Company, Mark Tarner, is an amateur paleontologist, though the whole family is involved in the hobby. This article mentioned the family has been going on excavating trips since the 90s. They do this instead of Disney! I was very impressed to read about the daughters that were interested in science and natural history. Part of the hope of the store is to get more children interested in science. I heartily applaud this mission!

The store is very small, but is a good showcase for the Tarner family's collection from excavation sites. It offers several items I know my older children would want to buy, plus a few things (like actual dinosaur bones) that I would be interested in. I have a slice of a dinosaur egg in my collection, but it's always neat to collect other items, such as the fossilized dino poop which is for sale. Actually, I should have picked some up as it would go great with the upcoming Nature Club for 6-9 year olds at Woodlawn Nature Center on fossils and dinosaurs. For a child to hold actual scat (fossilized and sterilized) from a dinosaur in his/her hand--that's pretty special! I just told my oldest I held some today . . . and he said, "What, you mean like dino scat? AWESOME . . . and gross! What did it look like?" We might have to make a trip back!

I've always loved Safari products. There is a good selection of their dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals in the shop.

Various fossils and artifacts are also on display. Many are for sale, though as these are real artifacts some are a little on the pricey side as they should be for an item of this caliber.

There are still many affordable items for children. My oldest would love collecting gems in a bag. My three-year-old wanted the candy, of course.

We settled on a Mystery Bag . . . I always loved getting grab bags as a child and wondering what might be inside.

Some items are sold by the pound, such as petrified wood or these geodes. The geodes were from Indiana! It's neat to see geology in our own backyards!

I wouldn't necessarily call this a "destination" store; however, if you have a dino lover or are in the area, it's certainly a neat place to check out! I might combine this with a trip to the South Bend Chocolate Cafe for a bite to eat and to play in the play area. My kids still keep asking me to take them back to play! While not right there, a tour of the South Bend Chocolate Factory is pretty neat--it walks you through the natural side of chocolate. Where does it come from, how is it made, etc.? The tour ends with a sweet treat!

Enter The Dino Shop through the Made in Michiana store--another delightful afternoon treat!


Thanks for sharing your passion for science, fossils, and dinosaurs, Tarner family! We'd love to hear more about your digs!

Nurturing Acorns--Fossils

Schools were delayed or cancelled for most of the Michiana area this last Wednesday. This was the view out the window as we pulled up to Woodlawn Nature Center for Nurturing Acorns. I almost understand how many don't know the nature center is there--it is pretty hidden from view! It's great there are so many trees nearby, though!

Two of the volunteers were out shoveling the walks. Workers from the City of Elkhart often do this, yet hadn't arrived yet. So volunteers do what they can to make the programs happen.

Our topic for the morning was fossils . . . we started with a little letter work.

We had options with the Aquadoodle, stencils, and wikki sticks.

My son in particular enjoyed making the letter o with the wikki sticks--is that the universal first letter that most children learn as it looks like a circle? These boys made some as well.

During story time we read, a couple of bigs and acted out dinosaur and fossil word plays. There was a lot of stomping and roaring! We touched various fossils with imprints of plants, fish, trilobites, sharks' teeth, shells, etc. We even saw a slice of a dinosaur egg. I will be honest . . . Dwight and the Trilobite is meant for a beginning reader, so has a bit of contrived wording; however, the illustrations show tools that might be used, looking for fossils, and uses some needed terminology. Fossils Tell of Long Ago showed the process of how a living organism turned into a fossil over time.

                                                               

Then the children made their own modern day fossils with a coffee grounds concoction.

Miss Beth also showed many fossils from Woodlawn Nature Center's collection. These are great specimens. I was very impressed with the variety and quality of fossils that were curated for the session.

After examining the fossils, the children used shells, insects, and other items to make imprints in the medium.

For the edible craft, I thought the children were having dinosaur eggs and some pretzels. However, the children know much better than me and are used to edible crafts. Their dinosaur eggs hatched babies and turned into dinosaurs with a little help from the pretzels. The children amaze me with the connections they make! 

During free exploration, the children checked out new additions to the sensory bin with dinosaurs and hatching eggs, digging tools, rocks, baskets, etc. This is always a favorite.

An excavation site was also fashioned as the children unearthed dinosaur "fossils".

They also used pattern blocks to make dinosaurs, laced dino cards and other shapes, made dinosaur rubbings, and explored creative dinosaur play with the fabric dinosaur set.

Many of the children stayed after for extra snow play! I love these trees growing together out front. 

There was also a big mound in front due to the plowing--the kids loved this! I wanted to play king of the mountain as well!

Rock Grid

We used the Outdoor Hour Challenge: Rock Grid Study as the basis of some activities this last week. I love how she gives many options, pictures, helps, etc. I am finding the monthly newsletter is invaluable. I save it to my computer to use later, as the link expires at the end of each month. I pulled out a big box of rocks to help in the process . . .

While we didn't tackle all the activities on the grid, we were able to do several! The boys found a collection of rocks that looked like ovals and then rocks that looked like animals. I am very curious about the rock that looks like it has a snake or worm wriggling through it. The boys had stories about all the animal rocks!

oval rocks

"animal" rocks

We also stacked some rocks . . . I purposely chose some pretty flat pieces of rocks from our collection. We made it up to 12 on this run!

My son retrieved his own "rock" collection (read dollar store gems) for rock stacking. These were harder. He and I couldn't get past stacking 4 or 5 rocks like this. There is a local artist, Artist Grow, who shares pictures of his rock stacking on Facebook. We've seen several of these and some videos of a person actually doing rock balancing. As we put these together, there was an actual "feel" when the rocks came together and would stay. This is rock balancing eye candy. I like environmental art and Andy Goldsworthy, so this is right up my alley!

We painted rocks as well . . . my oldest doesn't like to get messy, but he did his one rock okay.

Picasso would have kept going, painting more and more rocks. These paint pens were handy!

We'd still like to grow some crystals--we even had a couple of kits, but didn't get it done. We did talk about science fair experiments we saw that involved crystals. Lakes and ponds are frozen right now, so no rock skipping. Come to think of it though, there was some stick skipping the other weekend when we visited a frozen pond. We actually did some geological musings while out that day as well when we found a huge split rock! 

We improvised finding a rock that will write on the sidewalk . . . school was cancelled due to the low temps and kids were sick so we used the back of a tile for our "sidewalk". This is the collection of rocks that made a mark. One day we'll make it to investigating hardness at a more sophisticated level.

We made some observations in our nature journals and broke out the colored pencils for coloring our rock illustrations. 

  

We looked in more depth at one of our thundereggs as well:

We used the bookmark from the rock grid for our rock collections!

My oldest had his own book of Rocks, Gems and Minerals from Christmas. He read the whole book and frequently went back to it as part of his interaction with rocks. It's a nice small size, has good basic information, and is appropriate for beginning explorations. I had many other reference books, but since it was HIS, he used it more!