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In honor of NCTE/ALAN being in Chicago this year, I thought I'd toss in a post about Chicago dinosaurs. :-).  If you have the time, check out the Field Museum:

Tyrannosaurus rex (background) with (unidentified) Homo sapiens.

The Field Museum of Natural History (Chicago): My hometown museum, still one of the best in the world. The Field Museum is part of a lakefront museum campus that includes the Shedd Aquarium and Oceanarium and the Adler Planetarium. Just up Lake Shore Drive is the Lincoln Park Zoo, and a short drive south is the Museum of Science and Industry.

The Field is home to Sue, one of the largest, most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons ever found, as well as a Daspletosaurus and a host of other, less carnivorous dinosaurs (like Parasaurolophus and Diplodocus).

Sue is prominently placed in the Stanley Field Hall (the main hall), with the elephant diorama and the big totem poles. On the balcony above the skeleton is the actual skull (the real one being too big to mount) and a mural depicting what Sue would've looked like in real life.

Sue close-up

Triceratops and T.rex  face off

The John Updike Society has finalized a contract to purchase John Updike‘s home for $200,000.

Located in the Pennsylvania town of Shillington, Updike lived in the home for thirteen years as a child. John Updike Society president James Plath announced that the organization plans to make the house a historic site and convert it into an operational museum.

Here’s more from Reading Eagle: “Out of respect for the residential neighborhood, Plath said, he expects the historic site to be open only by appointment and not list regular hours. Plath said he has researched the operations of similar historic sites that were once authors’ homes, including the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians in Columbus, Ga., and the Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum in Montgomery, Ala.”

continued…

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“…Five, six, pick-up sticks!” This week’s collections object is a set of Pixie Pic-Up Sticks! Manufactured by Steven Manufacturing Company between 1940-1960, the classic game tests the players ability to keep a steady hand while trying to pick up a stick without disturbing the rest.

Put on your looking eyes and see if you can find it during your next visit! And while you are looking high and low, don’t forget to encourage curiosity by asking open-ended questions and engaging your child in the conversation. For example: How many sticks do you think you could pick up? Or simply play a quick game of pick-up sticks at home!

This week’s collections object is the Play Family Nursery School playset! This carry-along nursery school was first introduced by Fisher Price in 1978. In addition to furniture and accessories needed to learn, the Play Family Nursery School also included all the necessary equipment to play!

Put on your looking eyes and see if you can find it during your next visit! And while you are looking high and low, don’t forget to encourage curiosity by asking open-ended questions and engaging your child in the conversation. For example: What’s your favorite part of school? What games do you play on the playground?

Whoa…that’s one sweet ride! Vroom….Vroom! This vintage Wyanotte Toys convertible wind-up roadster is fully loaded and just revving to get out on the road. All Metal Products Company, founded in 1920, produced inexpensive pressed metal toys under the Wyandotte Toys brand name. This classic roadster not only rolls along when its key is wound, but also features a working convertible roof!

Put on your looking eyes and see if you can find it during your next visit! And while you are looking high and low, don’t forget to encourage curiosity by asking open-ended questions and engaging your child in the conversation. For example: Where would you go on a road trip? What kinds of things do you think you would see?

Salted Fish by Yeo Wei Wei, illustrated by Ye Shufang

Lynn is visiting an art museum for the first time.  She knows that the National Art Gallery will have lots of art inside it.  She and her toy bunny find a painting of fruit and then set out to see if they can find one with strawberries in it.  As they are looking, they smell something strange coming from one of the paintings.  As she counts things in the painting, she and her bunny hear a voice speaking from the painting.  Lynn finds herself drawn into the painting and learning about the way they are making salted fish.  The taste of the salted fish reminds her of her grandmother’s home.  As she leaves the painting with a bundle of fish to take with her, she promises to return to the art museum again.

The story here is told with a quiet, gentle voice.  Lynn’s interaction with the painting is not frightening at all, but an enthralling moment of connection.   It is what one hopes a child will experience at an art museum.  The story is built around a famous painting by Cheong Soo Pieng called Drying Salted Fish.  At the end of the book, information on the painting and the artist is shared. 

Shufang’s art is engaging with the bright-eyed child and the strong architectural lines of the building itself.  A muted palette that has pops of bright color at times adds to the quiet appeal of the book. 

This book gives young readers a small taste of Singapore which they will probably appreciate much more than the smell of salted fish!  Appropriate for ages 4-6.

Reviewed from book received from The National Art Gallery, Singapore.

Dinosaur Hall, photo courtesy of Houston Natural Sciences Museum

Big news from the Houston Museum of Natural Science (Houston, TX)! They've unearthed a nearly complete, articulated Dimetrodon skeleton, scheduled to go on display in the museum's paleo hall in 2012 (This is a big deal because, despite what you see in museums, paleontologists rarely find nearly whole fossil vertebrates).



Check out the HNSM blog post here. Oh, and Dimetrodon is a synapsid, not a dinosaur. It's also from the mid-Permian, so predates dinosaurs by about 30 million years. Oddly enough, although it looks like a reptile, it's actually closer to mammals.

Cyn and I took a trip to the the Houston Museum of Natural Science a couple years ago. It's just one museum in the Houston Museum District, near Rice University.

Homo sapiens (foreground) with juvenile Edmontosaurus

The museum, which is now a century old, has at the center of its Mesozoic display a Tyrannosaurus rex that stalks an adult and juvenile Edmontosaurus. A large sauropod stands aloof from the whole thing, while a Quetzalcoatlus soars overhead (see top photo). A number of smaller "raptors" and birds watch from afar.

Turtle (Toxochelys, I believe) and Mosasaur

The museum also features a number of life re-creations, including an ankylosaur being attacked by a pack of dromaeosaurs. (The ankylosaur, in fact, is the one Sinclair had built for the New York World's Fair. Two others are in Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose.).

I had a great time pottering around Amsterdam for three days with my sister and Stuart. My sister and I did a lot of general goofing around and we did a lot of walking in the freezing cold. Here's a photo she took of me in a coffee shop. (No, not that kind of coffee shop.)



We stayed in a hotel that had once been a rather grand theatre, so we were expecting a great lobby, but even more pleased to find we had an amazing view from our top floor room. Here's a picture I drew, looking out through the window in the slanted ceiling.



And a rough panorama photo collage of the view (which doesn't include the ringing church bells):



I made some pen sketches of a few of the paintings we saw in museums. Here's one from the Rijksmuseum. I rather like how it came out.




And a few from the Van Gogh Museum:





The guards at both museums were rather distractingly interested in what I was drawing. I think they were very bored. In the Van Gogh Museum, I thought one guard was telling me off for about two minutes and going to chuck me out, until I realised he was just being overly friendly. (...You are a weirdo, sir. Is this Dutch humour?.)



When we weren't almost getting run over by them, we love-love-loved all the bicycles everywhere. I bought one of the really big bells to put on my bike back in London.



The Dutch know how to haul things around on their bikes, I don't know why Londoners don't have more of this sort of gear. I suppose the cycling's a bit gentler in Amsterdam.







We took the train, a much more civilised way of travelling than airports with their endless security queues and having to get to the faraway airport super early.



Here's a picture I drew on the train of my sister reading Vainglory by Geraldine McCaughrean.



And a cool station clock:



As always, it was fun spotting bits of English slightly out of context.





We headed over to the Rembrandt House Museum, but only Stuart ended up going in because my sister and I got completely distracted by a nearby flea market. I drew this when we met him in the reception area, clutching three vintage dresses and a coat in our arms.

A few more photos from my sister's visit. Here she is at the Tate Britain, lit up like a chandelier. Mary's such a magpie, she loves little crystals and shiny things.



I doodled a few of the paintings, and they don't look anything like the original portraits.



We're always fascinated by The Cholmondeley Ladies, painted around 1600. The two ladies aren't twins, but are said to have been born and married on the same days. It's such an old painting but it looks so incredibly strange and modern.



The wall labels at the Tate Modern says that three big canvases by Cy Twombly are paintings of Bacchus, the god of wine; and it's true, a person can get very drunk on the colour red in that room.

Today I decided to do a quick post for teachers, highlighting what hopefully are some new resources you don't know about.  I believe great teachers today have to be creative, intuitive, and always on the lookout (and I want to help make that latter activity easlier). I thought it might be fun to share some resources with you, starting with my current hometown on Huntsville, AL

Edmontosaurus in front of mural.

A couple years ago, Cyn and I spoke to a class in Michigan at Oakland University and, as part of the research on THE CHRONAL ENGINE, we stopped by the University of Michigan Natural History Museum (Ann Arbor, MI).

This small museum on the campus of the University of Michigan has an entire floor devoted to vertebrate paleontology.

An Allosaurus is on display next to a stegosaurus "carcass," and an Edmontosaurus is laid out before a huge mural showing "now" and "then" scenes of what paleontologists thought and think its life must've been like. You can also get up close to a Deinonychus and an Ankylosaurus tail club, sauropod leg and hip bones, and see various theropod, ornithopod, and sauropod skulls. Looking up, you can also see pterosaurs and a mosasaur.

Skull of Edmontosaurus

I particularly like the way the displays are laid out. You can get close enough to touch most of them (but you shouldn't :-)) and really get a feel for the size of these creatures, especially the Edmontosaurus, which stretches a good part of the width of the hall.

Deinonychus

Next time you're in Ann Arbor, check it out!