Last Saturday, ECHOS teachers and teacher assistants came to the Museum on a quest to become prepared to host the Head Start Museum Family Day. Both ECHOS and Head Start are all about creating environments for young children to learn and develop in a safe and educational environment. This workshop in particular focused on the upcoming Head Start Museum Family Day, as well as identifying new ways to involve parents in ECHOS activities – with the expectation that teachers would then incorporate these strategies at their respective centers. As part of their “Quest” at the workshop, teaching teams explored museum exhibits that had been selected by ECHOS staff to help deepen their understanding of science concepts that are presented across all 9 ECHOS units. Throughout their Quest, teams compared features of live birds at the Museum’s Wildlife Center, learned about shells and fossils with “Fossil Frank,” observed bees at work in our new Beehive exhibit installation, and were even challenged to estimate how many gallons of water are in the large fish tank in the Sea Lab. Three teams guessed the exact number of gallons, and won prizes. Can you guess how many gallons? Scroll down to the photo from the Sea Lab to find out! (The answer is in the caption.)

This teacher was fascinated by this horseshoe crab shell, which she had never seen before. Have you?

One of the quest challenges was to spell out your own initials using these movable magnetic gears.

Teachers observed bee pollen and butterfly legs through microscopes.

There are 3,000 gallons of water in that large tank! How close was your guess?