UA’s Natural History Museum Offers Summer Fun

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Middle and high-school students will have an opportunity to help scientists uncover the mysteries of Alabama’s early life forms during the The University of Alabama Museum of Natural History’s 35th annual Museum Expedition.

With a focus on paleontology, students will spend a week working side by side with scientists on a field research project at several sites in Alabama’s black belt. They will collect samples, learn how to care and maintain for material and understand the importance of preserving these pieces.

“The goal is to supplement what they learn in schools,” said Todd Hester, museum naturalist. “There’s so much focus on testing now that students lose that curiosity of what nature and science is really about. This gets students out of the classroom where they can learn science at the hands-on level.”

Most of what the students find are teeth, turtle material, fish material, shark material and marine reptile material, but, one year, a high schooler discovered almost a complete shark vertebrae, Hester said. If the discovered pieces are important to the museum’s collection, it will be kept by the museum and the student who found the piece will be listed as the collector.

The camp is a full-immersion camp, meaning students will sleep in tents, take field showers and meals will be prepared in a field-kitchen trailer, Hester said.

“Everything is how it would have been at a turn-of-the-century, old-time field expedition,” he added.

Both camps can accommodate up to 20 students. The middle-school camp is June 17 through 22, and open to rising seventh-, eighth- and ninth-graders; the high school camp is June 24 through 29. Each camp costs $350.

In addition to the student museum expedition, the museum also offers an ecology-based Legacy Teacher Workshop June 12 through 14. The cost is $40.

From June 17 through 21, rising third-, fourth- and fifth-graders can enjoy a half-day Art Day Camp at the museum. Participants will learn about art elements while studying different themes.

Rising fifth- through eighth-grade students will have their own Science Day Camp July 22 through 26. A blend of the art day camp and the expedition, students will explore different daily topics and venture out to the field to study those areas. The cost of each day camp is $125 (lunch is not included).

The museum also offers fun for the whole family throughout the summer with its multiple day trips, from tubing the Little Cahaba River to searching for fossils in Shark Tooth Creek. Some of the trips are geared for older children, while some are perfect for younger ones. The cost is $25 per person ($20 for museum members); participants are asked to bring lunch.

Registration is open for all of the programs, and space is limited, so those interested are asked to register as soon as possible. Payment is required when registering. To register for the day trips or the day camps, phone  205/348-7550 or email museum.programs@ua.edu. To register for the expeditions, phone 205/348-9482, 205/348-2136 or email museum@expedition@ua.edu. The museum will be closed from March 25 through 29. For a complete listing of activities, visit http://amnh.ua.edu/wordpress/?page_id=14.