Students Report on the Harvard Natural History Museum

The Inly Lower Elementary classes visited the Harvard Museum of Natural History in Cambridge, MA this week. This field study was an extension of their geology and habitat work in class. A team of motivated third graders wrote the following reviews:

All photos by third-grader, Morgan K. (LE2)

Treasures at the Harvard Natural History Museum

By Zoe P. (LE2)

This article is about a trip the Lower Elementary classes at Inly took to the Harvard Museum of Natural History. At the museum, there is a beautiful rock and minerals room. There are all kinds of rocks and crystals. For example, the very kind of crystal with red spikes called crocoite. There is also the largest rock the museum has ever found, called an amethyst.

The next rooms we saw were the habitat exhibits. The first one was the rain forest habitat. We saw a three-toed sloth. They can hang upside down for up to two weeks. Now you may ask, “How could they get food?” They eat leaves on the trees near them! We also saw a White Tree Frog which was found in California.

The next habitat was the desert. We saw a chuckwalla lizard. The lizard has a little trick up his sleeve. When an enemy takes a bite at the lizard’s tail, the tail comes right off!

The next one was the mammals exhibit. Dis you know that a chimpanzee’s skeleton is more human-like than a gorilla’s skeleton? A life-sized giraffe is bigger than you think, it is about as tall as a building in Boston.

Lastly we come to the historical mammal room where there is an enormous type of sea dinosaur. It was about forty-two feet long and it lived sixteen billion years ago.

We also got to see the glass flowers exhibit. They really do look like real flowers.

Well, folks, that’s all I have for now. I hope that you will visit this museum some day.

Our Class Trip to the Harvard Natural History Museum

By Fritz S. (LE2)

We spent most of our time in the rock room where we had a scavenger hunt.

In our spare time, we visited the stuffed animal room and took a peek at the Peabody Museum. We also went to a classroom and learned about climates.

Some live animals we saw included a scorpion, poisonous frogs, tree frog, and a lizard.

At the end of a perfect day, we ate our lunch and returned to school.