Museums are a great way to stitch ideas together and bring a bigger context to the things we are learning.  During this year's planning interviews with the kids, interests in ceramics, dinosaurs, and digging up their bones were brought up by multiple people. The idea to build a stegosaurus skeleton out of clay so that we could dig it up emerged. This long term project led us to ask questions about soil, decomposition, how clay, crystals, and other types of rocks are formed, how they are found, what else lives underground, and sent us to visit the UC Botanical Gardens, the Berkeley Vivarium, and Kids N Clay, one of the open studios we like to visit in Berkeley. Above is a photo of the kids' favorite dinosaur from our visit to the Valley Life Sciences building on campus.  It was thrilling for the kids to come face to face with a T Rex.

Below is a photo from our trip to the SF MoMA in response to the kids' idea to have an art sale as a fundraiser to help pay for a new structure in the children's garden at Gill Tract Farm.  Here is a description of the event we participated in and the decision making process that led us to make plans for an art sale. Before we visited the MoMA, the kids were struggling with the idea of donating their work for the fundraiser. I wondered how we would ever have enough art for the sale if it all went home. After our visit to the museum, their attitude changed and they got excited about leaving their work to hang at the sale. There is a lot of fascination with spiders in our group, and it just so happened that the Louise Bourgeois exhibit was visiting. The kids set up an artists' camp and drew the spiders. A spider book may be soon to follow...