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| My wishing rock - glued in my first-ever pocket museum, July 14, 1947 |
We had planned on a young scientist walk in the wilds .........but it rained and rained first thing in the morning, so I took in some resources (tins, felt, small pieces of petrified wood, a jar full of ammonites, a few of my grandfather's clay marbles, glue, scissors, pens, a full copy of The NYT, etc) and set them out on a table. When the class came in, the young scientists sat around me and I slowly opened my wishing rock pocket museum and told them about my birthday treat when I was five - a trip to the beach. where I found the wishing rock and a beautiful piece of amber:
They were wide eyes. I had their curiosity in the palm of my hand!! :)
Lowering g my voice, I reached behind me and showed the young scientists some more of my pocket museums (especially the one with the tarantula exoskeleton and the tube of green blood!).
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| Collecting moondust from sand I collected from the Cherry Creek stream bed..... |
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| This 4 year old scientist made THE pocket museum. "Can I keep it forever, John Paull scientist? Go on....can I? |
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| 'LOOK, look, at this, my pocket museum! Look, Mr. Paull!' |
Do YOU fancy making a pocket museum?
GO on - it's dead easy - and.......you can keep it FOREVER!
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All you need is a tin (the older, the better), a piece of felt, a tube of glue, and an artifact.......
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| Glue the artifact in place...... |
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| Add the date, and save...FOREVER |
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| Cigar boxes are dead good, too......... |
How?
Easy............
All you need is a bottle..........................:)
Here's the story....:)
From a
teacher’s diary: 1966
After a wonderful but
windy afternoon walk around the woodland near Blaby Stokes school, looking for
something really good to add to our nature table, my class of ten and eleven
year olds began to talk about the afternoon’s experiences.
Dianne said how much she
enjoyed the walk in the long grass around the trees.
“Everything was beautiful, Mr. Paull…………….everything smelled dead good. Did you hear the wind? It was making a scary, howling noise and it made the leaves on the trees shake.” Then she added, wistfully, “Pity we can’t bring back the smells and the sounds of nature and put them on our nature table.” Then she thought for a minute……. “How could we do that, Mr. Paull? That'll be dead good!"
That made me think. And think.........and think again. I couldn’t get the question out of my head, and, that night, when washing out my milk bottle, I had an idea. If you half fill a bottle with water, then turn the bottle upside down, the water rushes out, yes? For a split second there’s nothing in the bottle.
We know, don’t we, that nature abhors a vacuum, so the outside air
rushes in and fills the bottle.
The
air carries the smells and sounds ……….doesn’t it?
The
next time we went for a nature walk, I took a bottle half filled with water.
When we reached the tall grass and trees, I gathered my class around me, waved
the bottle then turned it upside down. The water gushed out. As soon as the
last drop ran out of the bottle, air rushed in, filling the vacuum. I
immediately pushed in the cork.
“Look,” I said, “Inside this bottle……..we have captured the sounds
and the smells of nature………forever.”
Dianne
was particularly excited. “Hey, you did
it, Mr. Paull! That’s so great!” When we got back to our classroom, I stuck
a label on the bottle:
June 8th 1966
This bottle holds
the smells and sounds of the flowers
and the trees
around our school.
And
that started something!!
The kids were fascinated, excited that we had caught
THEM as well as the sounds and smells of nature and stored THEIR energy, sound
and emotion in a bottle. And there it remains to this day…………
From
then on, every time things were really humming in the classroom, I filled a
bottle with all of the energy, sound, wit and wisdom of my children, labeled it
and displayed it on a shelf that was looked after by Dianne.
John
Paull.
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