Presenting a Super Saturday in 
A Place for Discovery

 

Each year, the Museum hosts an intern who is responsible for organizing the activities and supervising volunteers for its hands-on room for children, A Place for Discovery. 

Among the duties of the Monticello College Foundation Intern are the design, planning, and presentation of the monthly Super Saturday program. These free programs encourage family participation and feature thematic activities, including crafts the children may take home. 

To put on a Super Saturday, the Monticello Intern must come up with ideas and find out where to go for the necessary information and materials for the project 

Follow a Monticello Intern as she creates a Super Saturday:

Planning
Reviewing Guidelines 

Before I begin planning a Super Saturday, there are several things I must consider:

  • activities should be designed for children ages four to eight, the room's main visitors
  • activities should take no longer than 30-45 minutes to complete
  • themes or topics should be based on the Museum's current exhibits or ongoing research 
Choosing a Subject
As soon as I have in mind a theme for the program, I meet with the members of the Museum's Education Section to discuss my ideas. 

I've decided to plan a Super Saturday called "Mussels: Nature's Water Filters." I chose this topic because 

  • the Museum has more than 10,000 freshwater mussels in its collections
  • one of our curators who studies mussels just finished work on an educational poster about the mussels of Illinois
  • mussels are important inhabitants of Illinois streams. 


After reviewing my topic and ideas for activities, the chair of the Museum's Education Section approves my plan.


Preparing 
Because there is so much to do before the big day, I've created a checklist of tasks:

  • review the mussel exhibit in the Museum 
  • study the Museum's freshwater mussel collection and talk to the curator who studies mussels.
  • plan the activities
  • gather materials
  • ask for any assistance I might need from staff members or volunteers 
Presentation
I've decided to use a large hands-on model mussel (made at the Museum) to teach about the parts of a freshwater mussel. I am also using the educational Mussels of Illinois poster, a film, storytelling, and sound to communicate my message. I hope to teach the children that mussels:
  • have soft inner bodies, two hard outer shells, teeth, and a foot
  • filter water through their gills to obtain their food
  • have larvae that must attach to fish gills or fins to survive
  • spend most of their lives buried in the bottoms of streams and lakes
  • have been harvested for their shells to make buttons
  • are now harvested to make cultured pearls
  • are suffering population losses because of increased sediment in streams 
Evaluation
The Super Saturday is over and I have cleaned and returned any borrowed items and thanked all those who helped. I am reviewing and evaluating the program to see whether I achieved my goal (to teach children about mussels in a enjoyable, hands-on environment) and to decide which activities were most successful. Perhaps I can adapt these for future Super Saturdays. 

From my discussions with the children, I think that many of them learned at least several new things about mussels. They especially liked the large freshwater mussel model, nicknamed "Milly," which was very helpful in teaching about mussel anatomy. All in all, I consider this program a success, and I am eager to begin planning my next Super Saturday.