On March 19th and 20th, during Spring Break Week, the Miniature Museum of Natural History and Laboratory will be going to the Imagination Station in North Liberty at the Gymnastics Center, 455 Herky Avenue.  We’ll be there between 10 am and 12 noon both days to talk about the project.

We will be bringing an assortment of the fabulous dioramas

We will have the miniature laboratory case with miniature slides and microscope.

   

   

We will have the miniature bird and butterfly cases with the miniature specimen cabinets.

   

We make the miniature butterflies and moths by miniaturizing them then printing on vellum paper, carefully cutting them out and slightly bending their wings.  The miniature nests we make on the tips of chopsticks, winding the fleece with bits of hair and grass and glue.

   

We repurposed miniature furniture and make compartments for specimen cabinets, then collect the tiniest pebbles, gemstones, shells and we make miniature eggs ourselves, painting in the spots when required.

   

And of course the rocks and minerals case, along with

   

the miniature herbarium where we carefully press plants and mount them on cards with strips of vellum and have a small library of natural history books we’ve made by miniaturizing big ones.

   

We will have some presentations on these days between 10 am and 12 noon for those who can attend.  And our special museum guard, Mr. Dog, will also be in attendance to offer pet therapy.

We hope to see you there!

Our Eastern Seaboard Representative of the Miniature Museum of Natural History is Stella Schultz, who lives near Boston.

Stella developed an interest in science very early in life, in love with so many aspects of nature.  Always a dedicated scholar of whatever she finds interesting (she studied Chinese for several years!) she began a botany experiment logbook and got a high powered microscope to look at the things she collected in the wild.

She began her own miniature laboratory with things she built and collected and with some tiny glass test tubes and other micro things sent to her by the Miniature Museum group.  Here are some photographs of her laboratory arrangements.

Stella uses her life size microscope to undertake various scientific studies and she records her findings in drawings and descriptive data in her Laboratory Notebook.  Here is her analysis of a Tilia Stem

  

And her close looking at a feather

  

  (Photographs by Allen Spore, Rob Clocker, Anne-Catrin Schultz and Stella Schultz)

We encourage all who are interested in the miniature museum to send us their pictures and tell us about the things you love to study in the natural world!