Chicago's museums and zoos were the first businesses to make the difficult decision to completely close their doors amid the coronavirus pandemic, but that doesn't mean we can't continue to enjoy and learn from them during this time. Below I have included links and materials available to all of us to help keep us connected to our favorite city spots for learning and fun!
- Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum is sharing daily activities to help kids of all ages engage and learn about nature! We have learned about butterflies and turtles already - sign up for their emails to stay connected. I think this weekend we get to celebrate World Rat Day with them.
- Shedd Aquarium is currently allowing those adorable penguins to explore the exhibits and sharing their adventures on social media, but they offer other ways, like the Underwater Beauty Live Cam, Shedd's Audio Guides, the Sea Curious show (a personal fave) and, back to those wandering penguins with Virtual Reality Penguin Expedition. Don't worry, these can be viewed with, or without VR goggles.
- Chicago Children's Museum has a whole page dedicated to "Recipes for Play" that you can do at home! We made their easy playdough one morning and have had multiple days of fun with it so far!
- The Field Museum has updated the main page of its website to include Learning Resources for parents and teachers and their Brain Scoop videos which were created by Chief Curiosity Correspondent Emily Graslie
- Adler Planetarium reminds us to keep looking up and has put together their own collection of resources including online exhibits! One thing we have taken advantage of is staying up just a little later at night to look for the moon before heading to bed.
- You are encouraged to subscribe to the Museum of Science & Industry's "Science at Home" series to have at-home science activities sent directly to your inbox! We will be doing our own "egg drop" experiment and will be sure to share the results. Take a look and see what might interest your own family!
- The Art Institute of Chicago has plenty of material to visit and explore virtually - we always love the Thorne Miniatures Collection (even more now that we have read Marianne Malone's "The Sixty-Eight Rooms"!) and can't wait to use the personalized guides we have made using their online JourneyMaker tool. The fun is that even though we can't go in person yet, we are able to research and explore the items we included on our own. Seeing them in person will be that much more interesting with a little knowledge on hand.
Looking for more online or virtual field trips?
Check out 33 Virtual Field Trip Ideas for Kids
