Journey to the Center of the Earth, just like in Jules Verne’s book…
When entering the magnificant Natural History Museum in London, you virtually end up in the Center of the Earth… and when you reach the first floor you have a great opportunity to understand natural forces such as volcanoes and earthquakes and how rocks erode into pebbles and sand. When we walk through the many displays we comment on the fact that behind every single display hours and hours were spent in collecting facts, building suitable models by various materials, trying to explain to the visitors how things work… I think the very difficult topics in Natural History Museum were very well described and easily understood, both for adults and kids. That is a fantastic help for all the visiting teachers, since they can thus walk through the displays with their classes in a more relaxed way, trying to answer the many spontaneous questions they get from their students walking through . There were plenty of fantastic hands-on-displays and charts and maps of different kinds. A fantastic experience for both teachers and students!
Whatever adults think of dinosaurs, I know from my years of teaching young kids, that the long lost creatures are very popular for some reason. Why is that? I think one reason may be that they can be compared to the dragons we get to know through children’s stories and old fairy tales. Maybe kids also use their imagination more than we do and picture themselves walking around on earth at the same time as dinosaurs?
When visiting the Natural History Museum in London one thing that struck me was that it was crowded with kids…
Being a teacher off work among kids who learn is very interesting. I tend to follow closely behind trying to eavesdrop and also finding ways to see what they see…
I remember twenty years ago when I taught an eight-year-old boy who told me all there was to know about dinosaurs. Despite his young age, he could hold a lecture about them, what they looked like, when they lived etc. I tried to keep up with him and borrowed books in the local library, but whatever I found there, was already known to him. I think books about dinosaurs may be the solution for some children’s reading problems… If they are eagerly trying to learn more about their favorite creatures, it may be more interesting for them to read an adapted fact book than to read anything else.
The very realistic looking dinosaurs at Natural History Museum serve the imagination and help many teachers, too, since they have a chance to explain very difficult things with the help of models and pictures and the many displays everywhere in the museum.
An area where we saw many students and teachers were where they kept the stuffed mammals.
A learning environment
Stuffed Mammals
From a teacher's point of view, some is old and some is new! 