Wichita Falls Museum & Art Center wrote:
>
> (This request has been previously posted to the Museum Ed. list; my
> apologies to anyone receiving it for the 2nd time.)
>
> I'm looking for some fun ideas for a Dinosaur Discovery Room.  We're doing
> our fourth robotic dino exhibit next year (opens Jan. 31), this time
> through Kokoro.  They provide a rubbing station and fossil dig.  Nothing
> much has survived previous dino discovery rooms, so I'll be starting from
> scratch.
>
> Dinosaurs are starting to feel kind of "old hat" to me, but I DON'T want it
> so seem that way to our visitors, of course.  So I'm seeking some fresh
> ideas -- What has worked well for you?
>
> Also, has your museum done anything great-looking (and not too expensive!)
> in a dinosaur exhibit installation, that you'd like to share?
>
> Your responses will be GREATLY APPRECIATED!
>
> Janelle Redlaczyk
> Wichita Falls Museum & Art Center
> Wichita Falls, TX  76308
> 940-692-0923
> 940-696-5358 fax
> [log in to unmask]


While at the Royal Ontario Museum, I supervized an activity area for
small children (2-6 years.  The most popular activity by far was the
"Dino Dig".  We had two low profile fibreglass cast of a matrix of dino
bones. They were about 4'x 8' and the sides were 2"x6"'s and held in
about 4" of corn meal (a lot less dusty than sand and cheaper too!).
Children were given whisks to brush back the corn meal to expose the
bones.  We had lots of illustrations to refer to when a child finally
exposed a particular bone.

We also did the usual kids in costumes activity with some really
wonderful costumes made by one of our casual teachers (the pterasaur was
amazing!).  We painted a large backdrop with lift up flaps for context
and for identification excercises.

To illustrate the physics of what palaeontologists think was a nasal
sound chamber of the parasauralophus (the ROM has the referent skull of
the species), we collected many tin cans, punched a hole in the bottoms
and threaded and knotted strings. Wet the string and pull it away from
the can and voila!-a wild dino call (works as a moose call too!).  Small
dino models in sand and water play areas are fun too.

I've made "false fossils" with plaster, sand, and cleaned, bleached and
baked chicken bones, but the labour involved is considerable and usually
we reserved this activity to organized class time. Small children
shouldn't use this as the dental picks and other tools (awls made with
3/4" dowelling and nails) could be a bit risky.  We always supplied
gardening gloves and close supervision by our teen volunteers.  Maybe a
larger false fossil could be made, for many children to work on.  The
only problems I see with this is that the children may not have a
takeaway and after awhile, inevitably mold grows on the chicken bones.

Today I finished up a series of classes at my son's grade 1 class and we
made a large table top model in plaster of a landscape complete with a
seashore, a forest, grasslands and of course the absolutely obligitory
VOLCANO.  The children were to create creatures in modelling clay for
each environmental zone.  The children could speculate on skin colour
and behaviour, and of course we just had to have a volcanic eruption as
a grad finale!  It's amazing, no matter how many times a kid sees a
baking soda, food colour and vinegar eruption they just love it.  This
could be a model that lots of children could add to.  This activity was
very cheap, just the cost of a bag of plaster some burlap, a plastic
soda bottle (volcano) and some boxes and stuff to shape the landscape.
Tempera paints work well to paint the plaster.

Hope this helps, I have some other activities that are great in class
settings.  Julian Kingston ([log in to unmask]) is now the Program
Coordinator and I'm sure he has some ideas.  Check out the Royal Ontario
Museum website at   www.rom.on.ca  .

Best of luck!

Paul Toth