This weekend, I went with my students to the National Science Museum in downtown Tokyo. I was really looking forward to the trip, but dreading it at the same time because it is kindof a nightmare trying to control 87 kids. But the trip actually went pretty well, with no tragedy of any kind. I don't think that we could have pulled off this trip with the second graders, but the first graders are still pretty innocent and studious. We went there to do research for the cultural festival, the theme of which is, in a bit of circular logic, "What We Learned at the National Science Museum." There were six main topics that we studied, dinosaurs and extinction, sea life, land life, genetics and DNA, tools and methods of science, and space. As these are pretty broad categories, our reporting will necessarily be pretty shallow, even for 12-year-olds. I was a little disappointed and the lack of depth of the museum overall, with only one spaceship, one plane, five or six dinosaur skeletons, and a few simple hands on physics lessons. But I guess the only other science museum I have ever been to is the Smithsonian, so it's hardly a fair comparison.
Donkeymon
