Report of the Museum of Natural History 



This report is an endeavor to answer three questions: First, What 

 is the museum doing for children; second, What is the museum doing 

 for adults; and third, What are the museum's needs? 



Girls and Boys at the Museum. 



For children this year there have been the usual educational games, 

 story telling, prize contests, special exhibits; and this spring field trips 

 have been undertaken for the first time. Also there has been given 

 instruction in subjects supplementing school work; and over all, the 

 effort has been made to answer boys' and girls' questions for 365 days. 

 The requirements of this last-mentioned part of museum work may be 

 indicated by the following queries: '^How can wood turn to stone?" 

 Another question: **If dinosaurs lived miUions of years before there 

 were people on the earth, how could a photograph be taken of one?" 

 To the youthful mind here is a case of nature faking, and there must 

 be no failure on the museum attendants' part to inform the questioner 

 concerning truths revealed through nature's records. This is a feature 

 of museum work of which no impressive figures can be compiled. 



Nature stories have attracted 543 little children; prize contests are 

 annually interesting an average of 158 competitors; and now the spring 

 hikes for boys are bringing to the museum collections to be studied 

 when weather makes trips inadvisable. 



Girls and Boys at School. 



Co-operative methods can perhaps best be indicated by accounts 

 of work with a teacher of the Chestnut Street school who took girls 

 and boys to the municipal tower. There a lesson was given on the 

 geology of the region, early settlement, and relations with Indians. 

 Then the Springfield of today with its buildings and industries held 

 attention. Following this survey from the campanile, class after class 

 came to the museum, where the session was continued with maps and 

 specimens. Granite from the hills they had seen, and rock replaced 

 by the elevator used, had acquired a new meaning. They handled 

 implements made by Indians, and coming to recent times studied the 

 building stones of the city's important structures. 



Another group with which co-operative teaching has been developed 

 satisfactorily is the Girls' Continuation School. Approximately 600 

 pupils have this year heard talks by teachers and museum staff on 

 industrial subjects. Heads of departments of some of the city's large 

 dry goods stores, and state supervisors, have on several occasions attended 

 sessions and spoken informally. 



Certain of these lectures that have proved especially interesting 

 have been repeated to other groups. By request the museum was 

 open the evening of November 13 for Girl Scouts, to whom the talk on 



