We Went to Chicago: Field Museum

The Field Museum is on the same museum campus as Shedd Aquarium, which means that the next day, we caught the bus there like total pros.

Meet my favorite fossil, Sue:

You might remember that I'm a big Sue fangirl--I'm fascinated by her history, and the story of her discovery and the controversy of her ownership. We visited the Museum @ Black Hills Institute over the summer, and I was excited to revisit her with that context in mind.

If you stand in exactly the correct spot, Sue can look you right in the eye:

Of course, that isn't her real skull there on the skeleton. Her real skull is upstairs, and it looks like this:

See the mirror underneath it so that you can see it from all angles? I LOVE that touch.

As the kids and I were admiring Sue and taking photos and heavily discussing all aspects of her form, a nice docent dude walked over and asked if we had any questions. You may remember this about me, but I LOVE docents, and I ALWAYS have questions.

So when the docent walked over, I was all excited to ask him the question that the kids and I had been debating amongst ourselves. You see Sue's tail?

Sue's tail has some interesting similarities to the edmontosaurus tail. Just last month, we were in the Children's Museum of Indianapolis Fossil Prep Lab, prepping specimens of neural spine (that bone above the tail) and chevron (that bone underneath the tail). So both edmontosaurus annectens and tyrannosaurus rex have those bones. But what about the actual vertebrae? One of the paleontologists at the Children's Museum took us back into the warehouse to see a cast of a complete edmontosaurus skeleton, so we could view the neural spines and chevrons where they belong, but neither the kids nor I could remember if the edmontosaurus also had vertebrae in its tail with that horizontal bone sticking out. Could the docent tell us what the name was of that bone in Sue's tail, and possibly explain if the tail structure of all dinosaurs was similar, or if there were interesting differences between dinosaur species?

The docent listened politely as I explained my question, then waited politely to make sure I'd finished and wasn't merely pausing for breath before setting off again, then paused while deliberating his answer, then finally said, "Ma'am, I cannot answer that question."

It's always awkward when you think you're acting normal and then discover that you've actually been nuerodivergently info dumping onto a complete stranger. 

Fortunately, he then asked ME some questions (about the mummified dinosaur that's on display at the Children's Museum--I love that dinosaur mummy!), and we eventually parted as friends, although I saw him still standing near Sue a couple of hours later when we again passed through the lobby, and I am 100% positive that he saw us and immediately turned his back and pretended that we weren't there.

Our admission to the Field Museum was free, on account of our local science museum, the Wonderlab, has reciprocal benefits there (I LOVE the ASTC Passport Program!), but I also bought us admission to the Field Museum's temporary exhibit on Vikings. One of my (too many) emphases in grad school was Old Norse, so I have a tediously detailed knowledge of and acutely nerdy interest in the Vikings.

Random story: As I was purchasing our admission tickets, the cashier asked how many tickets to the Viking exhibit I wanted. I looked over at the kids to make sure that there was no random adult standing with us and pretending to be my co-parent, and then said, "Um, three?"

The cashier, sensing my confusion, explained, "Well, some people only buy tickets for themselves, not their kids."

"What do they do with their kids while they're in the exhibit?"

She shrugged. "Leave them outside, I guess."

If I'd left my kids outside, I would have NO ONE to nerdily point out runes to!

And at one point, as Syd and I were looking at little figurines, I saw an image of Freyja, and happily pointed at her and exclaimed to Syd, "Look, it's Freyja! Remember when I told you about Freyja? She's the one with the cat-skin gloves!" Syd obediently looked at it and nodded in a vaguely interested way, but the couple standing just on our other side edged away from me uncomfortably. 

Neurodivergent. Info. Dump.

And Friends, this exhibit had TEXTILE specimens!!!!

Insert contented sigh.

Oh, and this is super cool:

It's excavated from a boat burial. I don't remember if the boat was burned or only buried, but either way, the wood, of course, had long decomposed by the time it was discovered, and only the rivets were left. So for this display, the curator hung the rivets from fishing line, exactly as they would be placed in the real boat!

See, it's both 3D and boat-shaped!

Coolest. Exhibit. Ever.

I also really like the Field Museum because, even though many of its exhibits are updated and quite modern, many are exactly the same as they were when the museum was first founded:

Old-school to the extreme. Will, especially, LOVES it:

This kid could walk around this museum all day, looking at every single thing in every single case and reading every single accompanying caption:

This one, on the other hand...

The Field Museum has a cool app that we played with--you scan a QR code at the exhibit, and you can see even MORE detailed information about it on your phone!

I knew we wouldn't be able to cover the entire museum in one day, so I had the kids take turns choosing galleries--we'd explore that gallery, and when we found ourselves back in the lobby, it was another kid's turn. 

Syd's first choice (after my turn--Vikings--and Will's turn--Mammals of Asia) was an updated exhibit on evolution. It began with the Big Bang, and you followed the history of the universe, then the earth, through the exhibit, passing various Extinction Level Events and seeing cool things and, partway through, finding your way into the dinosaur gallery! 

Oh, Happy Land.

Immediately after this photo was taken, I sat back down on the bench just behind me to better admire the Daspletosaurus there (this specimen used to be misidentified as an Albertasaurus!!!). A dude walked up, point and shoot camera in hand, snapped a photo of the dinosaur, then turned to me and said, "It's beautiful, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is!" I heartily exclaimed.

"I wonder if you'd like this book?" Random Dude then asked. "It offers another point of view."

And then, my friends, you are not going to freaking believe it, but RANDOM DUDE PULLED A RELIGIOUS TRACT OUT OF HIS SHIRT POCKET AND TRIED TO HAND IT TO ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'd instinctively reached my hand out when he offered, but as soon as I got a glimpse of what he was offering I snatched my hand back to my chest, then realized that I was being rude, so I smiled a SUPER crazy I Am Not Freaking Out AND Yet Am Totally Freaking Out smile, said, "Oh, no thank you," as nicely as I could, and began to giggle out of horror and embarrassment.

Dude left the dinosaur gallery immediately after this, because avoiding the crazy lady is more important than spreading the gospel.

Seriously, though--could he have made a poorer choice than to approach ME?!? I cannot have looked in any way like his target demographic, mooning over the dinosaur bones like the biggest nerdy nerd who had ever nerded. Like, has this guy even heard the gospel of the NEURAL SPINES and CHEVRONS?!? My religious conversion in the dinosaur gallery of the evolution exhibit at the science museum... that's just a non-starter. 

Okay, though, but Friends, this moment, when I was handed and ALMOST TOUCHED an anti-evolution religious tract, this moment has seared into my brain so clearly that I can clearly picture that tract.

And if I can picture it, I can research it.

And, Friends, I freaking FOUND it. For your reading pleasure/horror, I offer to you the link to the complete anti-evolution, incomprehensible religious tract entitled Big Daddy?

Suffer through it, and then rest yourself back in the arms of this welcoming, wonderful dinosaur:

Seriously, have you hugged a parasaurolophus today?

Check it out--Base Ten blocks!

Oh, and this--a ritual burial dating from the Pleistocene Epoch:

And our good friend, the mammoth:

By closing time, we were all super punchy and basically just crazed with informative overstimulation. Witness: 

Will was SO excited to see a life-sized model of a shaduf that she ran to find me, tugged me over, and then basically just beamed and pointed until I recognized it, as well. 

By the time we were ready to go, we were so dead-tired that when Will discovered that the large gift shop downstairs didn't stock the gummy dinosaurs that she'd wanted to buy from the "Sue Store" upstairs but I'd put her off because I didn't want to carry them around all day, she decided that she didn't want to walk back upstairs and go buy them.

Imagine. Too tired for gummy dinosaurs!

I conceded that in the future, we could purchase the crap that the children want to purchase in the gift shop of their origin as they encounter them, although I'm not going to be the one carrying that crap around all day. And I guess I know what to buy her for her birthday now!

We Went to Chicago: Shedd Aquarium

Here's the view from outside our hotel room:

And here's the (in my opinion) equally awesome view from INSIDE our hotel room!

Our hotel was close enough to walk to some sites, such as Millennium Park and the Art Institute of Chicago, but my plan was to take the bus to Shedd Aquarium, and--because this day was Sydney's ninth birthday--American Girl Place!

To that end, I downloaded both the Citymapper Chicago app and the CTA bus maps onto my phone to help me navigate. Citymapper is super cool in some ways, because all you have to do is plug in your starting and ending points, and it'll tell you which bus to take, where to walk to in order to catch it, when that bus will arrive, how many and which stops it'll stop at, and how long it'll take to get there.

Awesome right?

Except it doesn't really have walking directions, just a map that doesn't always have the street names conveniently listed, so I found myself orienteering, rather than simply navigating my way to this bus stop, and the particular bus stop that the app was trying to send us to... where the bloody hell IS that damn thing?!?

Sometimes the downtown Chicago streets go underground, which is where it looked like the bus stop was supposed to be, so the kids and I walked through the pedestrian area instead (it was lovely), and then down the steps, and then... across the street, maybe? We walked across the street, found a bus stop, waited by it--and then, going the other way, saw the #4 bus. Dang it!

So we walk across the street--where's the bus stop? Down half a block, under the bridge. Wait there--why won't you stop for us, #4 bus?!? We're definitely at the bus stop that says #4, so this time we wait, pointedly, directly next to the #4 sign--why won't you stop for us, frakking frack frack #4 BUS?!?!?!?

I am seriously condensing time here, just so you know. It's been probably an hour, by this time, with much walking back and forth and getting lost and sitting down on a bench to "let Momma just take some deep breaths and think, okay?"

"I'll just take the kids back to the hotel and they can swim all day," I thought.

"We'll take a cab. How much can it cost?" I thought.

"The damn aquarium is less than two miles away. We could have walked there by now!" I thought.

"I have two Master's degrees. I will NOT let the Chicago Transit Authority beat me!" I thought.

Finally, I said to the kids, "Let's just start walking, and see what happens. Maybe we'll think of something, or maybe the walk will be really great."

We trudged back through the pedestrian area and then took a right on Columbus. We'd walk through Millennium Park, maybe hit the Daley Park playground again. A couple of blocks down, though, what do we see across the street?

THE #4 BUS!!!!1!!!!!

The Citymapper app shows you the entire bus schedule of the bus that you want, but I couldn't quite figure out from that or the CTA site the exact map location of #4's adjacent stops, which was the final straw in me deciding that we'd just walk to the damn aquarium.

Fortunately, we were happening to walk right past #4's previous stop, a stop that it was actually stopping at, a stop that it was actually switching bus drivers at so that we actually had time to cross the street and run over to it and step on board it!

Thank you, Universe!

The night before, I'd had Matt walk across the street to the CTA vending machine at Navy Pier to buy me a bus pass and put some money on it, just so I wouldn't have to deal with quarters and dimes, and once I also figured out how to scan that, we were made in the shade. The Citymapper app does show you the list of bus stops, marking yours, so it's easy to see where to request your stop.

And that one bus stop that we worked so hard to find and waited at? The bus just blew by it as if it wasn't even there. That stop is on the CTA map, too! What the hell?

The bus driver had given us directions to walk to the Museum Campus after we got off at our stop (nothing like not knowing how to scan your bus pass to mark you as a total noob), and we wandered more or less in the correct direction to find it and take the pedestrian underpass into it.

But then... did I mention how foggy it was on this morning?

It was SO FOGGY!!!

That also did NOT help us in our navigations to the bus stop, and it did us no favors now, either. Museum Campus is just what you'd expect--grassy expanse with walking paths, and at each intersection, signs that point you in the proper direction. Since we could see nothing but fog, we followed each path to its intersection, took the path for Shedd Aquarium, followed it to the next intersection, repeat.

Except, after diligently doing this a couple of times, we then came to an intersection with no sign for Shedd Aquarium.

"Kids," I said. "This means that from where we're standing, we should be able to easily see Shedd Aquarium. It should be right in front of us. Sooooo....."

Nothing. Fog as far as the eye could see (which was about ten feet).

We wandered a bit, roved around, until eventually a roving kid stumbled onto a set of stairs. We followed the stairs up into the fog...

...and finally got to see some freaking fish, approximately two hours after leaving our hotel that was less than two miles away.

It was worth it:

Honestly, I didn't love Shedd Aquarium, because it's crazy pricey, and because we've been to Monterey Bay Aquarium several times, and Monterey Bay Aquarium is probably the best aquarium in the world. But it's been several years since we've been there, and Shedd Aquarium was impressive enough to the kids.

  

SHARK!!!

I really liked this coral garden.

Check this out, because you've been so good:

Shark eggs!!! How cool is that?!?

When Will finds a book that she wants in a shop, I photograph it and interlibrary loan it for her. This book was really interesting!

We finally emerged into the sunlight, in a world that was completely transformed from its morning fog.

  

 And yes, you can easily see Shedd Aquarium. Basically as soon as you exit the pedestrian underpass, you can see it looming in the distance, "SHEDD AQUARIUM" written large upon it, giant banners featuring aquatic life all over it.

Silly tourists.

We Went to Chicago: Millennium Park and Daley Park

Normally I talk about our trips in chronological order, but Millennium Park and Daley Park, connected by a Gehry-designed pedestrian bridge (which spanned the street that our hotel was on!) were only a few blocks from our hotel in Chicago, and what with walking and taking the bus here and there, we found ourselves there more than once.

I liked it best in the fog, and the kids liked Daley Park's epic playground best:

This first afternoon in Chicago we actually walked over to Millennium Park in order to see Cloud Gate, but stumbled onto this playground in Daley Park, instead. The kids were THRILLED, and Matt and I were pretty impressed with it, as well.

Everyone in this group put on red clown noses for this photo. I'm bummed that you can't see them.

I didn't edit these photos until later, so I had no idea that the fog would look this cool. If I had, I'd be subjecting you to a LOT more photos like these!

But a sunny day was best for playing with the pedestrian bridge and Cloud Gate:

I sent Matt and the kids down the bridge to get this shot, then heard behind me a couple loudly narrating my decision. Chick: "Oh, look what they're doing! I want my photo like that!" Dude: "Eh, you're going to look too small. Let's stand here and see how it works out for them first." Chick: "Hold up your camera, and see if they look too small." Dude: "I don't know; they're pretty small." Chick: "Well, I think it's cool!" After I took my photo and walked on to meet Matt and the kids, the chick ran by me to pose in their spot. I'm pretty sure that I'm walking by in the frame of the photo that the dude took of her. I hope she doesn't look too small!

Because the Bean is open to the weather, you can usually see smudges in its mirror images--but not way down in by the ground, where you have to crawl to go! I let the kids crawl in and take my camera. 

People ALWAYS ask Matt to take their photos. He looks really trustworthy.

You can see them and their reflection, AND see my reflection taking their photo! Cloud Gate is so cool.

Lord, I think both the kids are wearing Doctor Who shirts. We might as well start a fan club!

We did a lot of things in Chicago, but Millennium Park/Daley Park, it was the best of them. We mostly stuck with the playground side over the Bean side, as Cloud Gate was crawling with tourists, but only a rare fraction of them found their way over to that playground. However, the weather was cool while we were there, so the kids weren't interested in splashing around in the super awesome fountain that's on the Cloud Gate side--it displays giant images of people's faces, their lips pursed, the fountain water looking as if it's being spit out of their mouths. In the heat of summer, I imagine that I wouldn't be able to drag them away from that. And in the dead of winter, Daley Park apparently has an ice skating TRAIL!

Anyway, whichever side we found ourselves on, the kids had a fabulous time running around, the city view was gorgeous, and there were--hallelujah!--plenty of benches to rest our butts. We loved it.

Visual Literacy: Kid-Made Horse Breed Infographics

One of my goals for this school year was to have the kids become comfortable reading, analyzing, and creating infographics.

I mean, a research essay is all well and good, but if you can't distill your idea into a one-page visual reference, then maybe you don't understand that idea as well as you thought that you did, and you're certainly not doing any favors to others who are trying to understand your idea, too.

To that end, I switched the horse breed research that the children were asked to do each week as homework for their horseback riding class from a pre-printed infographic to one that I required them to create each week from scratch. I use the free version of Piktochart for this, and although the kids have a lot of trouble uploading their images to the correct site so that they'll stay with the infographic when it's downloaded or published, on the whole it's an acceptable infographic creator that's helped them learn the basics of graphic design.

Here's an example of what they create each week. You'll see that the children (originally both in collaboration, but now only Will, since she's the only one taking horseback riding lessons) include both facts and graphics in their infographics. You'll also see that I do not require them to edit misspellings; the research and presentation itself is quite enough to get on with here:

I'm very happy that both kids are comfortable creating basic infographics now. I would like Will to begin to create more complicated, more informative designs, but it's a struggle to get her to modify her particular technique that she's got down pat and can use to whip out a complete infographic in the half an hour before we leave for horseback riding class. We'll soon be skipping a horseback riding session, however, to accommodate various summer travel and camps, so perhaps by the time that more infographics are required, I can work out a study for creating them, ideally outsourcing it to Matt, who's a graphic designer and thus really ought to be handling this entire project for me in the first place, don't you think?

Find Me!

Did you know that although I post here and on Crafting a Green World a few times a week, I'm actually posting throughout the day, every day, over on Facebook and Pinterest?

It's crazy but true. I mean, I'm crazy, and it's true.
'
The fact is that I can't turn my brain off. Seriously, ask Matt--he'll tell you about the delights of attempting to have a nice conversation with me, when I ask his opinion on five different topics and then tell him all about a new project idea that I thought up while he was giving me his opinions and oh, where does he think that the new PVC pipe jungle gym for the kids should go? Because I've totally just decided that I'm going to make one.

So all day, every day, whenever I'm researching something online and I come across an interesting link or resource, I put it on Facebook, or I put it on Pinterest.

Eco-friendly crafts ideas and issues in craftivism go to the Crafting a Green World Facebook page.

Kid crafts, general crafts, and everything related to homeschooling goes on my Craft Knife Facebook page.

All relevant project ideas, tutorials, and homeschooling resources go on any one of my manically organized Pinterest boards.

Facebook is also fun, because sometimes I'll put up a photo of something that's happening right at the moment. The photo is invariably crap, because my camera phone is crap, but there you go.

And, of course, I want you to Like and Follow all these pages because I like hanging out with you, and I need you to patiently listen to all my millions of project ideas and plans so that my husband doesn't always have to.

Also, I'm pretty sure that I put the link to that PVC pipe jungle gym up on my Facebook page. So if you were already following my page, you could have already made that jungle gym!

If you did, post a picture. I need it as evidence that a PVC pipe jungle gym will actually work.