Sunday, February 27, 2005
Visiting the Trading Post
Yesterday, we went to the Trading Post at the Canadian Museum of Nature, located here in Ottawa, Canada'a Capital. This museum has always offered fantastic programming for children of all ages, and now is renovating so as to offer a more updated space. They have a dinosaur collection, sections on plants, rocks, animals and lots more.
The building is amazing, it looks like a castle. Apparently it was built in the early 1900's to mirror our Parliament buildings and in fact was used as our House of Commons for a number of years after a fire in 1918 burned down much of our original Parliament buildings.
At the Trading Post, each child is allowed to trade in up to 5 items. There are a few basic rules, such as the items must be from nature (Owen thought he could trade in a glass starfish he has), and you can't trade in more than two of the same thing at one time. You get two points for each item, with bonus points being available if the specimen is particularly good, or you know what it is or where it came from.
Owen traded in: one polished piece of shale, a shell from a scallop, a snail shell, and a tesselated cone (shell). Also, he successfully traded two "crystals" which he thought might be diamonds, but they turned out to be Halite (or salt)! Hey he got 4 points for this!
Once he had his credits, he chose two items to bring home from their collection. He picked out a large piece of mica (about 3 x 3 inches) and a medium sized garter snake skin, which is very delicate.
It was so much fun... I hope we do it regularly.
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I've been by that museum probably 10,000 times and I'm embarassed to say I haven't been in but that trading post idea sounds fabulous, I bet Katie would love that!
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