My Kleenex Field Trip to the American Museum of Natural History

When I was invited to spend the morning at the American Museum of Natural History with my friends from The Motherhood, I couldn’t resist. The museum has long been one of my favorite places to visit in NYC, and my kids and I have spent hours exploring the dinosaur exhibit and we love our visits to the Planetarium.  The museum is located in my old neighborhood, the Upper West Side, so it’s always special to go back and the museum holds many special memories for all of us.

Funnily enough, it being summer, my kids are crazy about their day camp.  So in love with camp that they declined my invitation to tag along with me on this special field trip to the museum.  But I didn’t mind.  For one thing, there is always a part of the museum I haven’t been to and I felt I could really explore without them in tow.  For another, the field trip was sponsored by Kleenex, who has an amazing initiative called Kleenex Field Trips, this being one of them.  For the 2011 – 2012 school year, Kleenex is committing $500,000 to their Kleenex Save the Field Trips Initiative that helps fund school field trips as part of the educational curriculum.  Field trips are an important component of children’s education.  Some of my greatest school memories are of school trips to the theater, puppetry center, zoo, nature center and art museum when I was growing up in Atlanta.  I want to make sure my kids have the same opportunities, here in NY or wherever we live.

The Motherhood gathered a wonderful group of bloggers including @NYCityMama, @MamaGoesNatural, @LoveThatMax, @veepveep, @thisfullhouse, @NewYorkChica, @jenrab,@MacaroniKidNYC, @EmilyMcKhann and @MommasGoneCity.  At the museum, we were introduced to curators and members of the marketing and PR team at the museum who accompanied us on a tour of the museum’s key exhibits currently on show.  While we were exploring the museum, there were dozens of camp groups who were brought to the museum on their own field trips, which was great to see, a testament to the strength of what Kleenex and The Motherhood are doing.

First we were taken to explore the exhibit, Frogs: A Chorus of Colors.  My kids would love it.  The curator, Christopher J. Raxworthy, was nice enough to point out particular frogs, describe their habitat and reveal other tid bits about their life style and survival strategies.  All of the live frogs in this exhibition have been captive-bred, to protect their populations in the wild.  There were frogs of all colors, shapes and sizes, and they were pretty amazing to see.  Check some of them out here:

Jessica Shyba from Momma's Gone City's daughter

Carol Cain from NYC Mama's son

We continued into The World’s Largest Dinosaurs, a smaller version of the larger dinosaur exhibit that teaches about the giant Mamenchisaurus, one of the largest animals to ever walk the earth – and offers insights into how their bodies functioned.  You wander around looking at life-sized bones, muscles, internal organs and more to learn about their anatomy and life style.

After our museum visit, we headed to the lunchroom for lunch with our team members and the staff.  It reminded me of the days I used to have lunch with my friends from school after an exciting Shakespeare performance at the Alliance Theater or Atlanta Puppetry Center of the Arts.  I think these experiences should stick around forever, and it’s important for all of us to tell our school principals, teachers and legislators when we head back to school in the fall.

To register your school to win 5K toward field trips during the 2011-2012 school year, head over to Facebook.