Materials for Creating a Curiosity Box
— one small cardboard box per student, cardboard and X-Acto knife
to make dividers within
box
— pencil or pen
— collector labels (~ six per student—a page to photocopy is
provided in Worksheet 1)
— datasheet (provided in Worksheet 2) or transfer table columns
to chalkboard
— computer with web access (for optional enhancement activities)
Procedures
- Introduce background information on curiosity cabinets as precursors to museums.
Introduce naturalia, artificialia, and scientifica as kinds of objects
that were collected for curiosity cabinets. Describe the homework activity. Ask students
to collect a variety of natural objects, man-made objects, and scientific instruments and
record information about their collections. About six objects per student is reasonable,
although the number can be altered depending on class size. Within the category of natural
objects, ask students to include some leaves, flowers, seeds, or nuts from their home
(e.g., rice, beans, dried herbs from the pantry) or backyard or nearby park. Please ask
students to collect only fallen plant parts if collecting beyond their backyard. (Collecting
plants and animals in state or national parks requires an official permit.) The man-made
objects and scientific instruments should be items from the students' homes.
Scientific instruments may be any items used to measure, document, or understand the world:
ruler, compass, watch, calculator, magnifying lens, battery, scale, accept any reasonable
item. While collecting, students should record on a piece of paper when and where they
collect each object. Give students one week to collect the items and arrange the items in
their box in whatever fashion they choose.
- On the day that students are expected to bring their curiosity boxes and collecting
records to school, introduce current classification scheme for living organisms and some
of the general characteristics of each kingdom. Ask students to consider ways they classify
everyday objects.
- Allow a few minutes for students to look at each other's boxes. Ask them to
look closely at the kinds of objects that have been collected and their
characteristics.
- Break the class into three museum staffs: one for the natural objects, one for the
man-made objects, and one for the scientific instruments. Give students 20 minutes to
brainstorm ways to classify the non-living objects and discuss the classification of
their plant, animal, fungus collections. Ask students to diagram a hierarchical
classification scheme for their objects, noting the major characteristics for each subgroup
of objects. A spokesperson from each museum staff should then present to the class their
classification schemes and the characteristics they used to separate the objects into groups
and subgroups.
- Using the agreed classification schemes, ask students complete a label for each object
in their curiosity box (a label page is provided, photocopy as needed).
- Ask students to pool their individual label data to create a database recording all
objects collected by the class. Fill in the columns on the datasheet provided (or tally
on the board).
- Each student should analyze the class database.
- Discuss the class's data and experience. Which objects did the class most
commonly collect? Are these commonly collected object commonly found in the environment?
Which item was difficult to classify? Why? What characteristics did you use to group
objects? How many groups did you recognize? Can you think of alternative ways to classify
the set of objects? Referring to your experience in classifying objects, discuss the
statement: Classification systems are human inventions.
Applying and Extending
- If you collected something new to science, how would you identify and name
it?
- How many species have been named worldwide; how many do you think have yet to be
discovered and named?
- Why is it important that museum labels include information about where the specimen
was collected? What kinds of research do you think takes place behind-the-scene at a
museum?
- Create a classroom herbarium for teaching and learning purposes. As a group project
collect, press, dry, mount, and label specimens of locally common herbs, shrubs, and
trees.
Create a field guide for the plants in your classroom herbarium. Prepare a page for
each species, include an image of the plant (a sketch, an image cut out of a magazine,
a photograph, any medium will work), a map of the plant's range, the plant's
scientific and common names, a description of the plant (its life form, its size, leaves,
flowers, and other identifying features), when to find the plant flowering (or producing
cones or spores, if not a flowering plant), and a list of the plant's habitats. For
each plant genus in your classroom herbarium with two or more species, prepare a key that
identifies each species.
A guide to plant collecting geared for middle school students is available from the
University of Arizona's General Biology Lesson Plans.
http://sciconn.mcb.arizona.edu/lessons.html
The Canadian Botanical Conservation Network provides instructions for collecting plants
and creating a herbarium accessible to elementary school students.
http://www.rbg.ca/cbcn/en/cbcn4kids/kidsindex.htm
Explore and do more!
How does your label data compare with labels of museum specimens? Many
museums and herbaria have images and databases of their specimens online.
Check out images of plant specimens online
- Missouri Botanical Garden
- http://mobot.mobot.org/W3T/Search/image/imagefr.html
- New York Botanical Garden
- http://www.nybg.org/bsci/hcol/
- Digital Flora of Texas
- http://www.texasflora.org/
- Fairchild Tropical Garden Research Center
- http://www.virtualherbarium.org/
- Plant Information Center of University of North Carolina-Chapel
Hill, School of Information and Library Science, North Carolina Botanical
Garden, and UNC Herbarium
- http://www.ibiblio.org/pic/
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