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Witte Museum - Xochitl Aguero Week 2

Witte Museum- Xochitl Aguero Week 2

This is my second week of my internship at the Witte Museum and so far I've been having a terrific learning and engaging experience helping out with the Witte Camp supervise the kids with exploring the Museum and doing their activities. This week the Camp focused on "Texas Critters" for the 6-8 year old kids and "Paleontology Pioneers" for the 9-12 year old kids. The Texas Critters Campers will get to learn more about Texas Wildlife from the Witte's crawly creatures in the wild exhibit as well as the fascinating creatures of Texas. Texas Critters will also focus on exploring their habitats, how they communicate, and see the world through their vision. For the Paleontology Pioneers Campers, they will look at the ways on what it takes to become a paleontologist through dinosaur exploration and exhibits as well as applying techniques in fossil identification in order to learn the skills necessary to study fossils.


On Monday, I checked in the new campers and Camp staff supervise them while we get them all ready for their activities. We did some icebreakers to get to know all the campers and played some fun activities to get the kids excited for the galleries and activities that we were going to do next. I helped the Camp staff prepare slime for the "River Siren Slime" project, which is an activity for the Texas Critters Campers that aims to help them learn how dart frogs secrete a mucus with batrachotoxin through their skin which would potentially be harmful for people. I had so much fun making the slime and also learning more about amphibians and insects. I then went to help the Camp Staff with the Paleontology Pioneers Campers for the rest of the day. With them, I set up a fossil digging activity, where the kids were given certain tools to dig through a pile of dirt/rocks in order to trace hidden fossils and document them on their Paleontology Booklet. We also watched a couple of videos on Paleontology and got to look at some real fossils discovered in San Antonio which I thought was really cool.

On Tuesday, I continued to help out the Witte Staff with the Paleontology Pioneer Campers, where we start every day with icebreakers so that we can get to know each other. Each day we explore a different gallery at the Witte Museum and today there was a majority vote to explore the Space Gallery, which had awesome pieces from NASA and and small immersive rides for the campers to enjoy. After that we did a fossil creation activity, where the campers had to use clay and q-tips to make their own fossil of their favorite dinosaur! We also watch more videos on the different types of dinosaurs and how they compared to modern dinosaurs. I learned a fun fact that the birds we see today are considered dinosaurs and the feathers we see now are completely different then they were in the past as they used to look like long thick hairs that have evolved over time. 

On Wednesday, The Paleontology Pioneer Campers voted to explore the Shark Exhibit today, and we got to see amazing life-sized sculptures of all the different types of sharks that exist on our planet. They also got to learn more about marine dinosaurs that existed long ago. They got to do a Shark Sensory Bottle activity, where they use a clear bottle, water, glue, blue dye, and a mini shark figure to create a mini size habitat for their sharks. It was cool to see all the designs and I made sure to help out any campers who struggled to make their Bottles. Today we got to see more dinosaur fossil replicas of real fossils discovered and do another activity on using clay to create dinosaur footprints.


On Thursday, I continued to help the staff supervise the Paleontology Pioneer Campers and they voted on exploring the Mclean Family Texas Wild Gallery today, which is a gallery that consists of several taxidermy of wild species that exist in Texas. The campers continued to learn more about Paleontology and what it takes to be a professional in the field. They focused more on their habitats today and what the necessities are for Dinosaurs that lived long ago. Their activity was to make a Dinosaur Diorama in order to learn more about their habitats and the need for water, food, light, and space to survive. the Campers then got to finish up any other activities that they have worked on so far this week. 

On Friday, we did our last icebreaker with the campers and I helped supervise the Paleontology Pioneer Campers for the entirety of today as well as help with their activities and any questions they may have about Paleontology. Today, we explored the People of the Pecos Gallery where they got to learn more about the people that lived thousands of years ago in the Southern part of Texas. Their activity today was focused on the idea of Biomimicry, which is the practice that looks to natures and natural systems for inspiration and using nature-inspired strategies to improve design of modern day technology, systems, and more. Their goal was to make paper airplanes that mimicked the wings of different types of birds in order to see which type flew the straightest and farthest. Looking at the design of bird wings can give them a better idea of how certain dinosaurs with wings flew in the past. With the remaining time, we decided to let them take a look at a modern day dinosaur which is known as a Qual which was super fun.


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